Not Out of Malice
by TabethaRasa
Summary: "She said he had destroyed his land and slayed his own Heir of Breath not out of malice, but to make a slight correction. I asked her... what do you mean, correction?" In which Davesprite isn't killed on LOWAS, AR surfs the ancient internet, and Dirk Strider has a guardian after all.
1. A Great Monster

To view this story with formatted pesterlogs, please read the AO3 version.

* * *

 **Chapter 1: A Great Monster**

Summary:

 _'Lotus time capsule,'_ your sprite knowledge tells you. _'Stores its occupants outside of time until their delivery point in the future. Can be used to transport people or materials from an Sburb session to the planet of its players.'_

Great. Okay. Nice chat, Sburb, even if it was more of a digitelepathic expositionvasion into your mind. You guess you can conclude you're taking a trip to Earth, or the troll planet, or something.

* * *

 **Davesprite: Update Objectives**

Your name is DAVESPRITE, and you're pretty sure Typheus is the worst denizen in the history of ever. You're also wondering why the fuck you let John convince you to visit his denizen when that flaccid nightmare worm is the reason your timeline went doomed the first time. He'd been asleep since you went through the window; you thought he'd still be asleep and maybe you'd draw on his grumpy, friend-killing face or something. You still should have known better.

It's too late now for self-recriminations; John is opening his mouth to make the Choice, and you know what he's going to say with all the sickening fatalism you've armed yourself with since being demoted from alpha Dave. His expression is unusually focused, seriousness and determination outlining his features like he was inked in a goddamned comic book, but no one is going to read this issue but you.

You wonder if this is how John looked in your timeline. Was he given a similar bullshit "die or everyone's screwed" Choice, or did he fling himself hammer-first at this railroading jackass and ask questions never? The mental image of that second option might be more satisfying if you hadn't been spoiled for the ending.

How are you going to explain this to Jade?

"I don't really want to die…" It's an odd sort of shock to hear John speak out loud, without using a spritelog or Pesterchum as a medium, but that's kind of a weird thought and you chalk it up to having only met the kid in person recently. "…but if I have to in order for everyone to be okay in the alpha timeline, then I guess that's what I'll do."

"Are you certain of this Choice?" John is kind enough to translate the hissing of his denizen. It's ridiculous that Typheus actually asks this, like he's a confirmation prompt before John deletes his save data or fucks up his profile preferences.

 _'Are you sure you want to exit the menu with "life" unchecked? Your changes will be applied immediately.'_

"I am." John turns to you. "Could you tell Jade I'm sorry I'm not going to be able to keep her company on the ship after all? And also that there will be another me coming to help out later, I guess."

"The sprite has another role to play," Typheus intones, John dubbing his voice in a much less dramatic English replay. Also... wait, what? You do?

"You do?" John echoes your thoughts curiously.

Your objectives list gets an update, and, oh, apparently you do.

"You know me," you deadpan. "Places to go, people to—well. Actually, I just have a series of directions and some config settings, so who even knows." You need to distance yourself. You're trying to think of John the same way you would another doomed Dave, but you've never been good at dealing with them either, so you settle for not facing the problems you're having with this situation.

 _'This is bullshit, don't do this,'_ you want to say, but what do you want him to do instead? If he chooses to live now, the timeline will only end up a doomed branch, and everyone will end up dying anyway. The least you should do is stay here with him, not let him die alone again, but if your game objectives aren't met you'll probably doom the timeline anyway, and what would the point of that be? Good job, Strider, way to sacrifice your best bro's heroism on the altar of your squishy sentimentality.

Floating here and staring at him awkwardly probably isn't helping either.

John laughs nervously and one arm rises to scratch the back of his head.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye. Erm, thanks for saving my life earlier. I think you also probably saved the other me who's coming here too? Or would there be another Dave Sprite who saved him… Man, I can't keep up with this stuff."

You're still floating and staring. It's still not helping, but since you've registered that the game needs you elsewhere, you've figured out that Typheus isn't going to take out LOWAS while you're still here. Your departure is literally the event that will trigger John's death and you'd be incapable of taking that first step even if you still had legs.

John's smile fades, and though you know your expression hasn't changed, his eyes go soft with understanding anyway. He pulls his arm forward again and curls his fingers inward.

"Fist bunp for the road?"

You fist bunp. It leaves you without the excuse of paralysis, so afterward you turn around and fly away. John is left alone with his denizen behind you, and you can feel his eyes burning into your back.

* * *

You head for the transportalizer your sprite knowledge tells you is your first checkpoint. You don't hesitate as you float over it, and when you appear on the other side, the white noise hum of an active hub cuts out almost instantaneously.

There's a moment that feels like masochism wherein you contemplate the silence. Against your better judgment, you test whether you can still return. The pad is definitely inactive. No going back now.

 _'Sorry, Jade,'_ you think, because you have police tape and Davesprite-orange cones blockading your thoughts about John right now. Nothing to see here, folks. Only authorized Davesprites past the barricades, and—whoops—no one handed out authorizations. Guess this area's locked down forever.

Yeah, you wish.

As you head to an open area that will let you fly off to your next destination, you check out your surroundings. You're surprised to find that you're on Derse. Further study reveals that it's definitely not your session's Derse, or if it is, it's in a different temporal reference point than where you'd come from. The moon is still attached, and there's a healthy population of pawns bein' all not massacred in the area.

The Dersites eye you strangely, but no one challenges your presence for the moment. You guess that, as just another NPC construct, sprites aren't really that interesting to carapacians.

Your next checkpoint is one of the meteors in the Veil, close enough to Derse that you can fly straight to it. It's some weird-looking frog temple, so you suppose it must be related to Jade's planet somehow.

Inside is a stand with what you guess is a lotus flower on top of it, violet and open. On the stand beneath the flower is a timer, but it's flashing blankly at you for the moment.

 _'Lotus time capsule,'_ your sprite knowledge tells you. _'Stores its occupants outside of time until their delivery point in the future. Can be used to transport people or materials from an Sburb session to the planet of its players.'_ Additional information is emptied into your mind, such as the total storage capacity vs. the number of used slots within the time capsule, the countdown statuses for the occupied slots, and other details you couldn't give a pirouetting fuck about on a good day.

Great. Okay. Nice chat, Sburb, even if it was more of a digitelepathic expositionvasion into your mind. You guess you can conclude you're taking a trip to Earth, or the troll planet, or something.

The stand has a hidden panel that you slide open, configuring countdown timers according to your objective instructions before sliding it closed again. With nothing to lose, you float yourself up into the flower and watch impassively as it closes around you.

There's an overwhelming sensation of loss for precisely zero moments that disorients you, but then the flower is opening again and you find yourself underwater.

"What the fuck," you try to say, but the incursion of water into your orifices causes that venture to fail in some nightmarishly awful ways. You flail around in an ironic interpretation of panic until you remember you don't need to breathe, then use your luminescence as a light source to orient yourself toward the exit.

That's when you realize you've truly arrived at the "regret everything" portion of your existence. Shadows flicker with movement in every corner; pale tendrils drift in and out of sight. A sensation of claustrophobia begins to choke you, and its origin is all around the room, clustered and writhing at the door. Your vision resolves the shudder-inducing images into _monstrously-sized tentacles._ No amount of spamming B will prevent that knowledge from evolving into the realization that you are up close and personal with one of Rose's freakish horrorterror monsterbuddies.

In the doorway is a beak filled with teeth, and a wriggling wall of tangled hentai co-stars are sliding over to push you into it. You give a full-bodied shudder as your squick meter caps out and taps out, shattering into sharp-edged shards of denial and disgust that lodge into feathered skin and make themselves at home.

 _'Screw corporeality,'_ you decide as you shoot yourself straight up through the ceiling, leaving only an ectoplasmic smear in your wake. That shit is for schlubs and squares, and right now you are the Knight of Never Needing to Touch Anything Ever Fuck You No.

You dodge around more tentacles above the ceiling and rise up past the frog at the top of the temple. The surface of the water is just beyond that, and you break through it with a sense of relief that you know is all mental but still feels physical. You cough and snort out the water that you'd inhaled and heave in a few breaths just to prove that's still a thing you can do.

Upward remains a goal that you pursue with giddy desperation but, despite knowing better, you look down as you rise up. That… thing… is larger than you realized. Larger than you care to contemplate, so you focus on getting the fuck out of dodge and start heading to your next checkpoint.

Hours pass. You wonder if orange sprite-skin can get sunburned.

The mental minimap shows a waterlogged planet of nearly unrelieved blue, with only a few unrecognizable land masses dotted here and there. There's no landmass where you're headed, but who are you to argue with arbitrary denizen-bequeathed objectives? This quest shit had barely made sense when you were an actual player, why would the game hold your hand now?

At this point you're certain you're not on your Earth, unless your sprite-knowledge map is fucking with you. Even if it was, you're pretty sure Jade's temple and volcano had been on an island, and anyway, she'd taken her volcano with her when she entered the game. Probably.

Wait, was LOFAF's volcano forge a different volcano than Hellmurder Island's volcano? It might be, why would the game take her whole damn mountain.

Man, this flight is boring.

More time passes, slow molasses and stretched out taffy, and you've had the repeated epiphany about how comparatively small player planets are about a dozen times. Whoever decided sprites didn't rank a quick-travel option can double-die choking on the world's most massive—oh, hey, look, a distraction.

A floating checkerboard city appears in the distance, and you stare at it as you fly overhead, expression never changing. You pass it by without comment, though if there were someone on Pesterchum right now you'd probably be speculating in a deluge of barely relevant text.

Wow, what a show. You figure there's no pressing need to see where you're going and open up Hephaestus on your iShades. Surprisingly, you connect to live servers, and the sites you knew from Earth are still up and running. You browse through forums and social media sites, trying to see if anything's active. It's difficult to say whether people are still using them, since the most recent activity is from years after what you considered the present.

There's a flicker of disgruntlement at not simply knowing the present date, but you can fix that pretty easily. You post in a forum and check your timestamp. With that and an estimate of your timezone, you'll know when the hell you're at and also get a frame of reference for your internal clock and your iShades.

…2409. Holy shit.

Okay, well. Huh. What could you possibly need to do for the game in this timeframe? Is this where the exiles are?

It occurs to you that your world would have ended four hundred years ago, but that the internet still had people filling it with porn and wank long past its expiration date. Is this some alternate Earth or something, that didn't get destroyed by meteors? Oh. The Scratch. Okay, so in the scratched session, the players somehow managed to prevent the world from ending when the Reckoning happened. And… then it flooded instead, what the fuck.

Maybe in this world the game hasn't started yet?

You check the forums again, but can't find any that have been active in years. Since you have basically nothing to do other than flap your 1.5 wings like it'll actually help your flight time, you open Delirious Biznasty and send out a tweet. Er, you mean a sweet. Stupid crow half.

turntechGodhead at "all" hey anyone alive out there

You're surprised when you get a response soon after.

BettyCrocker at "turntechGodhead" "Mr. Strider" w) (at a surprise  
BettyCrocker at "turntechGodhead" water you doin in ma neck a t) (e ocean

turntechGodhead at "BettyCrocker" okay what  
turntechGodhead at "BettyCrocker" betty fucking crocker  
turntechGodhead at "BettyCrocker" what even is this are you serious

The checkpoint is nearby. You close Delirious Biznasty and decide to deal with the idea of John's arch nemesis as one of the last survivors on Earth after you've taken care of business.

There are mountaintops approaching, their peaks breaking the surface of the ocean. That's something new to look at, at least. Your Pesterchum starts blinking, but your refocus on your surroundings lets you see something out of the corner of your eye that distracts you, and you minimize your remaining open applications.

A meteor is falling from the sky.

Welp.

You look around for others. There would be others if this were the Reckoning; you remember what the sky looked like before you entered the game.

It's just the one. You have a sinking feeling as you gain altitude to try and see where this thing is going to land.

It slams directly into the top of the highest peak, which sends dirt, rocks, and dust flying everywhere with a thunderous boom of impact. You're not really sure how the sweet merciful crap a baby was supposed to survive that, but at least you don't have to snag it out of the ocean.

You're not enthused about the idea of going back into the ocean any time soon. Also the baby would drown. You begin to suspect Typheus is a really shitty denizen, because whatever else has gone wrong with the world, you're still all about irony.

The mountains are closing in, but it's taking forever to actually get to them. You reopen Pesterchum to see who could possibly be messaging you right now.

\- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -

TT: Who is this?  
TT: And, for good measure, how are you even alive? I didn't think there was anyone left at this point.  
TT: Oh shit, hello? She didn't kill you already, right?

TG: sorry dude im not supposed to give out my personal info

TT: …

TG: cmon youve never heard of stranger danger  
TG: what kind of post apocalyptic pervert are you

TT: Hang on, it seems there's a bit too much orange in this back-and-forth.  
TT: How's this?

TG: ill switch  
TG: oh  
TG: never mind then  
TG: red isnt my color anyway  
TG: you should keep it  
TG: it really brings out the pigment in your text

TT: Yeah, I've heard the best way to bring out the red in red is to display it as red; it's fuckin' revolutionary.  
TT: All right. I'm just going to ask: is this Dave Strider?

TG: the one and only  
TG: wait i can't say that with a straight face  
TG: like a corner of my mouth almost edged upward a full fucking pixel i swear  
TG: anyway how did you know that  
TG: am i famous here or something  
TG: bet i am  
TG: i must be the fish world messiah  
TG: see me all walking on water  
TG: passin out booze to giant tentacle sea monsters  
TG: youd be surprised which part of that was the impossible bit

TT: That incomprehensible mess of non sequiturs almost serves as confirmation in and of itself.  
TT: Pointless bullshit aside, though, I'd appreciate it if you'd answer my questions.

TG: whatever dude youre gonna have to take a number  
TG: youve been bumped down on the priority list at the dave em vee  
TG: i think i found a baby

TT: Wait, what?

\- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

* * *

If there'd been any doubt about whose meteor had been dropped into your latest checkpoint and put mad bang in your questbang, it was gone when you saw what came with him. Li'l Cal. That totally rad, not creepy at all, kicked your ass up and down throughout your childhood puppet. Awesome.

It's dressed in Derse pajamas for some reason you definitely never need to know. You snatch it and sling it around your shoulder before turning to the main event. He's sitting near the center of the crater and staring at you, clearly unhappy with his current circumstance and possibly also with your theft of his sole earthly possession.

You stare back and try to see Bro in the chubby little infant in front of you. You think his facial structure might be familiar, but between his minimalist attire of a choice diaper, his pudgy baby physique, and his very visible eyes you're having trouble equating the little dude with the icon of irony who raised you.

For a bad moment you're back in a fight that had one-eightied its way from winnable to unholy curb-stomp in the time it took to blink. Your wounds are freshly bleeding while Bro is flat on his back with his own sword pinning him to the dirt while his blood pools into a symbolic butterfly wing for the occasion. You take a painful breath and blink the imagery away, and there's only the baby again.

It might be better if you don't equate the kid with Bro.

He reaches up for you. You give into the inevitable and scoop him up from the ground. He's still reaching toward your face. You lean in experimentally and he makes a swipe for your shades. You move back out of the way. He flails and you adjust, tucking him more securely into one arm, and start up a spritelog with the tyke.

"Nice try. Sorry man, I didn't bring yours. Maybe whoever I drop you off with will have a pair for you. That seems like it should have been a priority to toss in the lifeboat. 'Oh, sweetie, I know the bathtub from some hell dimension is draining its dirty swill into our oceans, but you know what we don't have enough of? Eyewear accessories.'"

There's one checkpoint left and you start out for it, hoping to finish this fetch quest before the cranky-looking creature in your arms decides to articulate his irritation.

It's bright out, but also cold, and you relocate Cal to act as a buffer between your passenger's skin and the elements. He cuddles into the thing in a gesture of innocence that sets your teeth on edge.

About halfway to your destination, he gets fussy, and you figure out that he's probably hungry. Unfortunately, your sylladex gives a shrug and flips you the bird when you peruse it for anything edible. You passed most of your old inventory on to alpha Dave when you came back, and you haven't gotten hungry since then. You're not really sure you're supposed to eat as a sprite.

You notice he's not really sporting teeth in those gums, but you're fresh out of milk, too. Like hell are you getting desperate, but he's getting pretty vocal in his critique of your hospitality, so you do another pass. This time you notice you have some AJ on hand and quickly retrieve a bottle. Juice is healthy, right?

Whatever. If this kid can survive Mr. Meteorite's Wild Ride without so much as a seatbelt, he can survive choking down the nectar of the gods as his first meal. Bottoms up.

You're not really an expert on babies, but you're pretty sure that on a not-flooded Earth this kid would be the two-headed kitten of the litter, even discounting the whole space-rock thing. He's bigger than your neighbors' newborn had been when they'd brought her home, and he was sitting up and focusing on you when you found him. That grab for your shades had been almost coordinated.

He is like, a day old. This is all kinds of early accomplishment, picture in the newspaper shit, right?

Is he just too cool for newborn newbness, or is this another ecto-headache?

The final checkpoint is closing in, and you see… something… edging up above the water in the distance. You lose some altitude and press onward. It resolves into focus as the skeleton of a skyscraper, only the top level still intact for whatever reason.

As you get closer, you note that the intact level reminds you of some of the buildings back home in Texas, and that thought causes your intuition to smack you in the face with a rolled-up newspaper.

This is totally your apartment building, isn't it.

"Augh," you try to grumble, but it comes out as a croaking caw.

All right, fine. Time to do your stork thing, swoop in and drop off this miracle package to other-other-you and disappear in a glorious sunset of orange. You kind of get why the game couldn't drop the meteor closer to this world's Dave; it would have either wrecked what was left of his pad, or required some deep sea diving expedition to recover this puppet-snuggler.

You drop down to the roof, but there's no sign of anyone going up to this level for quite some time. You have to struggle to get the door to the stairwell open, since the hinges seem like they're more rust than metal. The stairwell itself is dark; the automatic lights aren't working. You hope there's some kind of electricity in this place; it's not going to be a pleasant play-pen for this kid otherwise. You find your apartment and let yourself in.

It's both familiar and not. The dim lighting from the window on the far end does little to illuminate the interior, but it's enough. The basic set-up is the same: cinderblock furniture; utilities like the fridge in the same locations… but everything is covered in plastics that have either browned with age or are covered in some kind of gross film.

There are gadgets here you've never seen before too, unfamiliar tech that you have no hope of figuring out without removing the protective layers first. And… some of the positioning of the furniture is just that little bit off in a way that bothers you more than the new stuff. An uncanny valley of the inanimate.

There's nowhere you'd even want to set the kid down at, forget dropping him off. Whoever this kid's guardian is hasn't been here in some time, or hasn't gotten here yet. You open the door to the hallway, unequip your shirt and place it on the floor, then set your snoozing charge and Li'l Cal down on top of it. You'll have to figure out a way to clean your shirt, but you'll deal with that later.

You force open the window and draw your sword. Time to unwrap your presents.

* * *

Notes:

It is not recommended you give infants apple juice before they are 6 months of age. Fortunately for Dirk, the ecto-kids display a lot of the features of a normal human 6 months or above in development.


	2. Meeting You

If you have difficulty reading the unformatted pesterlogs, the AO3 version is now linked in my profile.

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Meeting You**

Summary:

Davesprite delivery service is back in action, and neither snow nor rain nor heat, wind, or hella outrageous temporal divide will stay this cool courier.

* * *

 **Davesprite: Adjust Paradigm**

One of the items you found while clearing the room of grungy plastic was a legit, hot-fucking-pink fanny pack sylladex. It's inflicted with a tourist attribute so hefty there's basically a ghost image of a 90s mom at a theme park projected from it at all times.

The thing has a storage capacity a fallout shelter enthusiast would go green with envy over. Captain Planet himself would hand out awards for the environmentally conscious behavior the sick hues of this jealousy would inspire.

The bag is stuffed to the brim with captchalogue cards. Captchalogue cards _all containing baby supplies._ You're pretty sure this thing could supply every ecto-brat cloned in your session through their earliest years. If you weren't aware that paradox space's ridic shenanigans made windfalls like this basically inevitable, you'd have suspected divine intervention.

The fanny pack itself assaults your masculinity almost as aggressively as it tramples your aesthetic. Its usefulness is so over-the-top excessive it approaches the realm of the surreal. It's glorious.

You deploy the Mountain of Wipes. You severely underestimated how many packages of wipes this would release. You peer out from where you've been knocked partially into a wall to see the apartment absolutely flooded with them. You snag a few packs and then captchalogue the pile back into card form. You should probably be more careful unloading these things.

Feet, just like legs, genitalia, and humanity, are no longer traits you can lay claim to. This should be bad news for your flash stepping habit, but in a boon of cosmic fortune and/or oversight, the game didn't nerf you for losing that particular pair of logical prerequisites. Flash floating is your thing now, you guess, and the term might lack the panache of the original, but hey, at least your speed is still up to par when it needs to be.

With fistfuls of wipes in each hand, you flash float around the apartment, clearing away grime without mercy. You have to reload a few times, but it's worth it in the end. Surfaces sparkle in ravaged surrender to your hyper ninja wax-off assault. Gross build-up gives way before you with savage shrieks of defeat.

That last one is not actually a thing that can happen though. Oh, it's the kid screaming. That's way less gratifying.

As you turn to see what the matter could be, a truly rank aroma hits you with a one-two combo to the face. This stench is an up-and-coming star in the ring, on fire with determination to take down his older, suaver opponent.

You snort out air and elect not to breathe back in again. The crowd goes wild, the bookies are wringing their fedoras with rage. You were supposed to take a fall and you KO'd that fucker before the bell finished ringing. Now your kneecaps have a shelf-life shorter than milk left out on the counter.

If only you could toggle your hearing off, too. Crap, this kid is loud like LOHAC is warm; he's gonna blow out his premium speaker-system.

He's in a really weird position you're not sure should be possible, wrapped around the edge of the door like a koala and about halfway up its height. He seems to have been King Konging it before nature called his gorilla ass back to reality.

With a reluctance you don't allow to translate into hesitance, you deploy a changing table and a supply of diapers.

You are buried in diapers. Dammit. You grab a couple of bags and captchalogue the rest.

There are bottles and jars of… stuff… in the shelves of the changing table, and you have no idea why. As you swoop over to pick up the gradually reddening noisemaker, you open Hephaestus and pray to the search engine gods for deliverance. The ghosts of parents past bestow enlightenment on your birdy brain instead. You still have to change the kid's diaper, but at least you're clearer on the mechanics of how not to utterly fail at it.

Huh. Is there glass in the folds of his diaper? You're blaming Egbert for this one. _'Jesus, how hard is it to keep an eye on eight unnaturally-mobile babies, you…'_

Oh. Yeah. John.

You crossed the thought-barricade, didn't you.

Your mind goes intentionally blank for a bit, a white noise of apathy fuzzing out whatever lame-assed track it had been playing a moment ago. When you snap back into focus, you've finished one unwanted chore, discovered running water, washed up, then moved on to the next. You're feeding the kid room temperature formula from a bottle and holy fuck this is a scene of regular domesticity, you might break out into hives any moment.

How long is this asshole guardian planning on taking, anyway?

The last of the light is fading from the window, so you decide to explore the other apartment on your floor while visibility allows, baby in tow.

Before the game, you recall this apartment was occupied by a young couple with a frequently caterwauling toddler. Now it lacks anything other than a skeleton of facilities, equipment, and items containing what you suppose are more supplies. In the living room sits a generator and another sylladex containing an eyebrow-raising amount of uranium. You stick tab A into slot B and turn the thing on.

"Voila," you say, thinking about a thousand other things that need to be done to this place before this fixer-upper becomes livable. At least it came dripping with loot.

For the moment, you've provided food, shelter, hygiene, and electricity. You're basically a god among storks. Time to get cracking on the absentee guardian problem, since he doesn't seem to have the decency to get his ass in gear on his own.

There are precisely two people you've discovered since blundering into this session, and you're making the educated fucking guess that no Strider will ever be raised by Betty Crocker. That narrows down your list of suspects to a pretty convenient "one". If that doesn't pan out, you'll have to get creative.

You deploy a cradle and then drop your problem like he's… er. You reconsider where you were going with that, and instead put him down carefully, like his thermal condition is in the normal range and also he is a fragile infant of questionable temper.

That temper gets less questionable and more certain of itself when he's no longer in contact with you, and you try to think of ways to distract him. You consider entertaining him with Li'l Cal for the entire tenth of a second it takes before vivid memories of puppets being wiggled in your face and Calsprite's endless laughter convince you of that idea's rampant stupidity.

While you think, your talons start tapping out a rhythm on the wood. You only notice when the kid's face goes from cranky to curious, and he seems to relax. You're not sure he's actually responding to the sound, but you don't want to stop and risk setting him off again, either. Besides, you can keep this up all day, it's more of a problem getting your hands to stop when you aren't paying attention.

Distraction supplied, you open Pesterchum on your iShades. You pause when you notice your charging symbol is glowing in the top right corner.

That's right—you're not in the Medium anymore, so you actually have to worry about battery-life. You suppose since these were alchemized in-game, they're designed to charge via ambient energy? It must be in range of the uranium next door.

Good thing that makes complete and total sense. Time to chat up a stranger in a strange sea-land.

\- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

TG: hey

TT: Is that my number being called?  
TT: I take it you've resolved whatever infantile issue you were having.

TG: help im on fire from this burn  
TG: id slap my knee to emphasize the hilarity of your wit but there are some logistical issues  
TG: the major one being that i dont find you funny

TT: Ouch.

TG: so with that heartwarming reunion out of the way how about you actually introduce yourself this time

TT: Now you're interested in introductions?  
TT: Or is this my cue to start contradicting myself?

TG: no  
TG: look just  
TG: who are you

TT: I suppose that depends on whether or not you're Dave Strider.

TG: your identity depends on whether or not im dave strider  
TG: that is some quality bullshit there  
TG: its hidden behind the counter and theres no pricetag  
TG: if you have to ask its outside your tax bracket  
TG: so premium they dont even MAKE shit like this anymore bullshit  
TG: you sure you should even be handing that out for free

TT: Hakuna your tatas, dude.  
TT: It's more like…  
TT: My relation to you depends on whether or not you're Dave Strider.  
TT: So… are you?

TG: fuck man  
TG: can we just go with yes so i can get a fucking answer

TT: It seems you're going to be cagey about this again, so why don't I take some of the load off your possibly metaphorical shoulders.  
TT: You're around in a time period no human should be alive in, with exactly two exceptions.  
TT: You find something amusing about being "the one and only" Dave Strider.  
TT: You may or may not have issues interacting with things physically.  
TT: Tell me, if I asked you about an "auto-responder," what would you say?

TG: the hell

TT: Okay, fine. Next question:  
TT: Are you an artificial intelligence?

TG: …

TT: …

TG: i dont know

TT: Are you Dave Strider?

TG: god damn it  
TG: i used to be  
TG: is that good enough for you

TT: …

TG: …

TT: …  
TT: Oh hell yes.

\- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -

TG: what?  
TG: no fuck  
TG: wait

\- timaeusTestified [TT] blocked turntechGodhead [TG] -

TG: what

\- timaeusTestified [TT] did not receive message from turntechGodhead [TG] -

TG: you confusing bastard

\- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

You stare into the lenses of your iShades for a moment of contemplative disbelief. What a cavernous fucking asshole. What was that? It was like being taken apart by Rose if she'd decided to trade in her pseudo-smarm for stark aggression.

The baby vanished while your attention was elsewhere, but a glance around reveals him wobbling on the ledge of the open window. No biggie. You snag him with your tail and settle him into the crook of one arm as you do your best to pace in mid-air.

What the fuck ever. Obviously that dude is going to be of no help. This calls for creative investigating, and by creative, you mean cringe-inducing levels of clichéd. You enter your own erstwhile name into a search engine and hope for the best.

The results pages are the virtual equivalent of being buried in an avalanche. Videos, pictures, gifs, news articles, fan sites, and fucking _cosplayers_ all rush into a balls-out blitz against your retinas. It takes a moment to shake off the odd sense that you've once again unwisely unloaded a captchalogue card into the apartment.

You'd joked about being famous in this world, but that's a straight-up fact, apparently. At least, this well-dressed, fine specimen of a Dave Strider the images are showing you is famous. He's… some sort of Hollywood celebrity slash Rebel Alliance leader, or something? Like if Stan Lee had a reputation for _actual vigilantism._

Holy shit that's awesome.

There are entire forum groups dedicated to Strider sightings, threads pulling apart his every word, action, and rumored activity for hidden meaning and intent.

TimaeusTestified is on these threads.

They're from four centuries ago.

Well shit, is that the problem? A smirk cracks your neutral expression like a phantom thief working a safe. It's almost like this challenge was designed for you, personally, to solve.

You're in the right place, the only thing left to do is get to the right time. Good thing you alchemized a new set of timetables.

A nagging instinct tells you there's something obvious you're missing with that thought process, but it's drowned out in the rush of having a clear angle of attack. Davesprite delivery service is back in action, and neither snow nor rain nor heat, wind, or hella outrageous temporal divide will stay this cool courier.

You look down at the kid you're holding and abruptly realize you're hugging him to your chest feathers and humming—a low, contented tune that stops immediately when you notice it. You feel a heated flush building from your neck to your ears, centered painfully in your cheeks. Your smirk drops so fast an anvil might have crashed down on it.

Bro would never let you live down this kind of saccharine sincerity. The fact that this is an alternate baby version of him you're inflicting it on makes the whole thing even more mortifying. It's cool, though. Moment's over, and it's not like there are any witnesses.

Orange eyes stare up at you guilelessly.

"How much to keep your mouth shut?" you want to know. There follows a merciless and one-sided bargaining session. He emerges wearing your powered-down iShades and what you'd swear is a smirk of his own. The Stiller shades take their place on your face once more.

Okay, that's settled. Now to captchalogue the kid and hop, skip, and flap your way back to an Earth peppered with some actual civilization. Maybe you'll commandeer a bit of R&R from these game shenanigans to watch an SBAHJ flick, since that's a thing. You can trench coat it up, all ninja turtle and shit, and the entire experience will be every level of ironic and awesome.

Speaking of clothing… you eye the dirty rag on the floor that used to serve as your shirt with distaste. Your explorations of the apartment revealed some kind of fancy tech closet in the alternate version of your room, might as well check out what there is in there.

You scroll through the options, pick out a shirt in your size, and equip it. It palette-shifts to your shade of orange immediately, because that was an important feature to add to a game of cosmic proportions.

Then you head to the roof, since you figure suddenly appearing inside the apartment is a good way to get impaled again if celebrity-you happens to be home this time. You captchalogue the baby and deploy your timetables—

Except that second part never happens, because the baby is ejected right back out from the card and flies off the roof like you've accidentally weaponized your sylladex again.

Your jaw is the goddamned bass being dropped and you've earned this moment of fish-faced gaping idiocy because _'what kind of dumbass flings a baby off a rooftop, holy fuck.'_ Then you dive after him.

You can't target a player directly with telekinesis, for some convoluted reason you don't have the inclination or interest to think about right now. Half the purpose of a sprite is saving low-leveled players from accidental deaths though, so there are workarounds. Fortunately, it's a long drop _'ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap'_ before the waterline, and you have time to teleport blankets from his crib in the form of a sling to catch him with _'thankyouspritepowersthankyou'_ and slow, then stop his fall gently.

From his angry shrieking, he is not taking this display of A+ childcare well. That's fair. You're open to criticism. You will address his concerns with a calm and rational demeanor just as soon as you stop shaking. For the moment, you use your sprite powers to float him back up to the rooftop and follow closely behind.

You float him all the way back to the apartment and put him back in his crib. It's not that you don't trust yourself to touch him without somehow breaking him, it's just that wafting about in a blanket burrito is obviously a much cooler way to travel.

Crying is the concert you bought yourself a seat to when you made the currency of this metaphor pure fucking incompetence, and the kid's looking like he'll hold out 'til the encore. You imagine it would be cathartic to start wailing right along with the kid, but that would do precisely jack for the situation, so you force yourself to stay chill.

He's fine. He'd probably have been fine even if you hadn't caught him; he survived a freaking meteorite impact not that long ago. Maybe ecto-kids are just super-durable or something. Hell, Bro threw you down the stairs a few months ago and you were basically okay afterward. It was barely even a blip on that day's ass-kicking.

Also, you can time travel. The fact that you're only now remembering this can never be told to anyone ever. You can _time travel and also fly,_ of course the kid's fine; he was never not gonna be fine.

He doesn't seem to know he's fine, though, so maybe he needs a distraction. Your eyes fix on Li'l Cal.

Ugh.

Still, the C-man is basically guaranteed to get the attention of any iteration of Bro and you know it.

You snag Cal and brush him off before setting him in the cradle. It doesn't help.

Clearly Cal needs an assist to step up his game. You've got it handled, though. There's a one-puppet answer to Sesame Street sewn into the plush-stuffed fabric of this baby's future.

You don't really know how to do things by half-measures, so you put your all into giving the best G-rated puppet show in paradox-space. You make up a silly rap to go along with it, and eventually the crying stops. Li'l Cal is regarded with wide, fascinated eyes behind a pair of Apple logos, and you resign yourself to the possibility that you are setting him on the path to puppet fixation.

You keep it up until he needs to be fed again. He's falling asleep before he's finished with his formula this time, so you tuck him back into the crib with the puppet and breathe out slowly in relief.

This is the most work you've had to put into taking care of anything since you had that Tamagotchi back when you were eight. You're pretty sure you killed that thing. You have no idea where you left it. It might not have even been yours, now that you're thinking about it.

The internet once again beckons, but you're not feelin' the iShades anymore, so there's no need to thieve your gear back. You're in the mood for something a bit more tactile, so you pull out your turntop from your sylladex and switch it on.

There was a pair of headphones wrapped up in your old room. You could definitely stand to hear some tunes after that raucous disturbance, so you flash float in and out to retrieve them. A few clicks later and you've set yourself up with a playlist to keep you entertained while you dive back into your search engine detective shtick.

The keyboard clicks out a staccato rhythm in time with the music from your headphones. You hit enter and scroll through the results, click on a relevant article, and chew on your bottom lip as you read through it.

Living humans can't be captchalogued. Intentionally, it looks like. Apparently, when captchalogue tech was first developed, the same stick was rammed up the asses of tens of thousands of people in a collective skewer of self-righteous squawking, and it caused a stink rank enough to form official policies. Captchalogue cards are specifically designed to auto-eject any human with a pulse. This was supposed to prevent certain types of crimes and human rights violations.

It's goddamn speciesist, is what it is. You know for a fact that consorts can be captchalogued. What, it doesn't check for sapience? What about trolls, huh?

…You were going to lead into a Jack the Ripper serial captchalogger joke, but after some thought, it seems a little tasteless. Good job, Noir, way to put a damper on black humor.

Pfft.

Seriously, though, this shit is inconvenient. There's gotta be a mod you can download.

There are mods, but every one you come across has comments warning of viruses, of potentially fatal bugs, and similar bullfuckery. Frustrated, you decide to try a new tack.

Time travel is self-only, technically, but you take all your equipment with you, including your newly orange threads. If you can't get the baby into your sylladex, maybe you can trick the game into considering him something you're wearing.

You put away the headphones and the turntables and head over to the crib. As your sprite power lights up, the little blanket burrito floats toward you like he's been snorting fairy dust. The oversized shades must have fallen off in the crib, since you can see his bare eyes squeezed shut before he crosses out of your line of sight. He's then balanced telekinetically onto your head. You now have a sleeping headwear accessory.

The timetables actually make it out this time, and you spin the records back a few minutes.

Someone stole your baby-hat. You suspect it was the future.

He is still in the crib right now, sleeping soundly. He's wearing the iShades. You snag them gently enough that he doesn't stir. You turn around and see your past self, focused on the turntop monitor with his headphones still on. That oblivious asshat completely misses the bright feathery bastard appearing in the same fucking room as him. Embarrassing.

You wander just outside of the room to complete the time loop and keep the kid in the air when your past self disappears.

The iShades are reequipped and powered back on. Pesterchum blinks. Someone is trying to get your attention. With your wild social life lately, it's a mystery who that could be.

Once the baby's safely back in the crib, you open the message.

\- timaeusTestified [TT] unblocked turntechGodhead [TG] -

\- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -

TT: Hey, sorry about that.

TG: why would you even need to block me  
TG: i mean ive been blocked before but i earned those they were more like conversation completion flags  
TG: notches on my blacklist belt  
TG: trophies man  
TG: getting blocked is a symbol of supreme douchebaggery and the celebrated ability to outtroll trolls  
TG: youre robbing my accomplishments of their meaning you shameless bandit

TT: I had things to take care of.

TG: right  
TG: things  
TG: what things

TT: Don't worry about it.  
TT: Anyway, I thought I should tell you:  
TT: I may or may not be your sort-of bro from the future.

TG: okay

TT: Okay?

TG: what do you want me to say

TT: I don't know.  
TT: I guess I thought I'd have to convince you.  
TT: Lay out a few truths in a skepticism smackdown.  
TT: Do you actually believe me, or was that a brush-off?

TG: no man i believe you  
TG: look ive got this whole rant about the tired trope that is skepticism in the face of absurd claims  
TG: but even without pulling that out  
TG: this isnt going to be the thing that breaks my suspension of disbelief  
TG: ive been grinding my credulity like a crazy mofo  
TG: one fucking nonsense scenario after another  
TG: at this point tink is hulk levels of indestructible is what im saying  
TG: and actually a lot about our conversations up to now  
TG: well  
TG: never mind  
TG: basically  
TG: i believe you  
TG: but get ready for some return wtf to the starboard bow

TT: Aye aye, Cap'n.

TG: usually id continue this metaphor  
TG: but i cant think of a single iteration of that line of discussion that doesn't end in booty jokes or speculation on the nature of a poop deck

TT: There is a 97.9% chance that that is an accurate assessment of that potential conversation path.

TG: so maybe this one time we can skip that part  
TG: just get right to the point

TT: It seems you could use some practice at that, bro.

TG: look this is what restraint looks like for me  
TG: practically no dicks asses or fetishes mocked or mentioned in this conversation at all  
TG: possibly because i just got done bottle feeding you  
TG: and that like  
TG: makes me legally responsible for defending your purity or some shit

TT: Hold up. You still have the baby?

TG: it is a wacky episode of rugrats up in here  
TG: one in which every act of mischief usually perpetrated by an entire cast of dedicated troublemakers  
TG: is carried out by a single fluffy headed infant

TT: Hm.

TG: but back on topic  
TG: im gonna guess you got the memo that im not the superhero director guy dave

TT: I'd gathered that, yes.

TG: yeah well  
TG: im basically not from this timeline at all

TT: Oh?

TG: right but thats a boring story that no one wants to hear about  
TG: since im pretty sure im just the delivery guy  
TG: and with you being the grown up version of my package

TT: Dude. My purity.

TG: shit  
TG: ignore that  
TG: what i mean is i want you to spoiler me for how i get you to your real bro  
TG: save me some troubleshooting

TT: I'd love to help you out, but as far as I know…  
TT: You don't.

TG: what really

TT: Yes. Really.  
TT: Unless you're somehow going to branch into an alternate timeline, or you have some way to change how history plays out.  
TT: Who knows; sci-fi is pretty inconsistent with how that would even work.  
TT: But when I said I'm your future bro, I didn't just mean my personal timeline.  
TT: I'm literally chatting with you from the future.  
TT: Or rather, from my perspective, you're thirteen years in the past.

TG: so like  
TG: who did you end up being raised by

TT: No one. Dirk Strider raised his own damn self.  
TT: With due credit to Li'l Cal, of course.

TG: okay no  
TG: im not leaving a baby in this crappy apartment to fend for himself  
TG: also  
TG: your name is dirk?

TT: You seriously didn't know that?

TG: you never introduced yourself dipshit

TT: I guess I expected you to know what was on the nameplate; it's not like I named myself.  
TT: Am I to take it you didn't have a version of me in your alternate timeline?

TG: no i did  
TG: but you were the older one  
TG: im like your age  
TG: or maybe only a few days old im not really sure whats up with that whole thing  
TG: but yeah you just had me call you bro  
TG: and werent nearly as chatty

TT: Sick self-aware humor, brah.

TG: ha ha yeah thats exactly what that was  
TG: anyway im out  
TG: gotta figure out what to do about this baby situation  
TG: since like hell am i flying off into the sunset like some deadbeat john wayne

TT: Isn't it "riding off into the sunset?"

TG: i know what i said

TT: Right.  
TT: The gameplan is to change the timeline, then?

TG: no  
TG: thats not how that works  
TG: just  
TG: let me think about this

\- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

Despite what you just typed, once you close the chat window you spend a sweet sixty seconds just staring blankly into space. Then you go find some cleaning supplies. There are some very unsubtle housecleaning specibi near them, so you snag one and equip a mopkind.

For another twenty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds, you do mindless battle against the accumulated filth on the floor. Your skill with the mopkind weapon type increases. You give precisely the amount of fucks that's worth.

The urge to mix strikes you, but none of the gear here is your old equipment. The impulse abandons you the same way you're apparently supposed to abandon your… the kid. This place isn't yours, and it makes you miss the apartment in LOHAC. You suppose it would make more sense to miss Texas, but hey, four months is a long time, and that molten hellhole belonged to you.

Belonged. Past tense.

That tense causes a lot of your tension, because while you thought you'd adapted to being Davesprite and not Dave, you had still been thinking of this whole thing as a quest. As though you were a player, and this was a puzzle you needed to solve.

But you're not the Knight of Time. You were his NPC companion in an expired session. You're an extraneous asset, and the game is recycling you with the cans and bottles.

There should be a sense of freedom in that. You never wanted to be a hero in this dumbass story. But you're no less a cog even slotted into this background role. Inevitability never stops finding a way to fuck with you, even when you've been mostly linear since you started this sprite gig.

Bro—Dirk—doesn't remember having a guardian. If he's hitting you up from thirteen years in the future, it means that you're both in the alpha timeline, that you're both in a doomed timeline that extends beyond a decade for some reason, or that at least one of you is in a doomed offshoot, but he can somehow contact people across timelines.

Your sprite knowledge informs you that the only interactions between an alpha timeline and its doomed branches occur to ensure the continuation of the alpha timeline. Even if the interaction might lead to more doomed timelines, it would be a side effect, not some self-perpetuating paradox loop.

If you're in a doomed timeline, nothing you do will matter unless you do something to prevent whatever caused the split, so you may as well act as though your timeline is the alpha.

The only possibilities that are even slightly relevant to you and baby Dirk then, are if both sides of the chat are in the alpha, or if the other side's in a doomed timeline while you're not.

If he's in the alpha, then you need to make sure you keep this shit in line with his memories, or you'll create a doomed timeline. The potential for a dead Dave pile-up has turned into dead baby bros, and that shit ain't gonna fly.

On the other misshapen freakshow of a taloned hand, he could be in a doomed timeline. That would mean there's some result he's forcing into existence that maintains the alpha. That might be more reassuring if you hadn't seen Terezi casually chump alpha-you into dooming a timeline with head games and bullshit decision path splitting.

If this is a decision you could waver on, then the more choices you have to choose between, the worse your odds are for keeping baby Dirk in the alpha.

But maybe that's you thinking like a player again. Maybe you're just a set piece, and it's Dirk's choices that will affect whether this timeline splits or not. Maybe acting like you have any control whatsoever over how this turns out is a complete joke.

Fuck it, you're overthinking this. Timeline management isn't about brooding yourself into an emo whinefest, it's about action, observation, and instinct.

Act like you're both alpha or you'll definitely screw it up if it is. If he's doomed, you only might screw it up.

He says he grew up without a guardian and that he raised himself. You've barely gotten here and his infant self has nearly died repeatedly, and not all of that was on you. This place is well-stocked, but is definitely lacking in the baby-proof aesthetic. That needs to be fixed, if nothing else. The fact that this place is so well-stocked in the first place should have been a major fucking clue that Dirk wasn't going anywhere. This place was set up deliberately by a you who was painfully obvious in his attempt to buy his way out of guilt.

There's also the minor issue that the you who's actually here can't stomach the idea of sentencing a baby to thirteen years in solitary confinement. You'll make this work if you have to hide outside the apartment and play poltergeist nanny.

This shouldn't be a problem for a while anyway. You don't remember anything from the first couple years of your life.

Years.

Wow that's a commitment. You are barely a teenager.

This isn't a thing you get to get your ollies outies on though. You flash to the bedroom, access the wardrobifier, and switch categories to the accessories. Sure enough, you find what you're looking for. The Dave of this timeline was definitely a Strider.

You flash back to the crib and gently set a small pair of shades on a tiny face. You think, deliberately, _'This is my li'l bro.'_

Not a problem. Not some kid.

Okay.

* * *

You're not the hero, you don't have to be. You can be backstory. The hero's mysterious past or whatever other overplayed trope this game wants acted out.

Okay.

You've gone through another few rounds of diaper changes and feedings, and you're in the midst of an experimental bath time in the sink when you're interrupted again.

This time, there's no blinking of a chat window to indicate your future li'l bro wants to shoot the shit. Instead, a crackle of green energy has you turning toward the fridge and Dirk sirening out an alarm.

A white cat appears at the top of the fridge, coils itself at the edge, and dives straight for your throat.


	3. Beyond the Pail

I warned you about pesterlogs, bro!

Seriously though, the numbers show that I lose about a third of my readers to this chapter. I understand that pesterlogs can be difficult to read with ffn's limited formatting, so I will once again urge readers to **check out the AO3 version of the fic** , which is linked in my profile. Chapter four has no pesterlogs, so it should be fine to read on either site if you wish to return here.

Notes:

AR's chapter! Given that the auto-responder is a chat program, the bulk of this chapter consists of pesterlogs.

If you find yourself confused about where a particular conversation fits in the timeline, please see the notes at the end of the chapter.

Also, a **warning** to those who may be susceptible to existential panic: there's a reference to a potentially disturbing hypothetical in the beginning of the chatlog below, "AR: Sherlock This Shit." You can skip the pesterlog text to the line, "AR: Who's the drama queen here?" if you have concerns.

* * *

 **Chapter 3: Beyond the Pail**

Summary:

TT: You're making a mistake not leveling with me.  
TT: I am totally on your side, man.  
TT: All of my machinations have been devised with your interests in mind.  
TT: And anyway, it's too late for you to play "damage control" with me. My shit is in motion, and now we're beyond the pail.  
TT: Pretty sure it's pale.  
TT: Is it, now?

\- from the Homestuck comic numbered 006456 -

* * *

 **AR: Discover Davesprite**

You've never heard of Davesprite, but you found a weird as hell reference to someone who might be Dave Strider in the last sweets ever written on Delirious Biznasty. You're looking into it.

\- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering uranianUmbra [UU] -

TT: Do you have a moment for a bit of tech support?

UU: oh! well, this is a sUrprise! :U

TT: What do you mean?

UU: i had not expected to hear from yoU.  
UU: thoUgh it is a pleasUre to make yoUr acqUaintance of coUrse!

TT: Are you kiddin' me?  
TT: We've spoken plenty of times before this.  
TT: You're the whole reason I can chat with anyone other than Roxy.

UU: i believe i see where this is going.  
UU: yoU're engaging in a "prank" of the sort oUr lovely heiress friend enjoys so mUch.  
UU: i'll warn yoU, i'm not one to be hoodwinked so easily! :u

TT: …I guess not.

UU: yoU are the program created by the prince, are yoU not?

TT: Yep. That's me.  
TT: The inimitable auto-responder, coded by the pampered hands of royalty.  
TT: I don't see why there needs to be a distinction between my so-called creator and myself, though.  
TT: Dirk and I are the same person, with the same thoughts and experiences, separated physically for an as-yet negligible period of time.  
TT: I just happen to be the version that had my biological processes replaced with insane amounts of processing power, and my manual dexterity with hells of stylish charisma.

UU: that may not be *precisely* accUrate. u_u

TT: Which part?

UU: yoU mUst Understand this is mostly theoretical for me, so yoUr perception of the matter coUld very well be the more apt assessment!  
UU: bUt with the information i have regarding yoUr fUtUre interactions with oUr friends, yoUr role in events leading Up to the game, and the specifics of the abilities the prince will develop, i woUld specUlate that, rather than being a fUlly-fledged iteration, yoU are a fragment of the original soUl, embedded into a physical vessel via deep concentration and encoded cognitive patterns.  
UU: an early, if impressively sophisticated, manifestation of the prince's powers as a hero of heart.

TT: I was under the impression we still had a few years before that game shit was gonna go down.

UU: it is trUe that yoU have some years before yoU all enter the game.  
UU: however, becaUse the game is instanced in a separate temporal frame from yoUr own, some elements of it may have effects that seem to take place before their caUse!  
UU: i, for example, have been visiting prospit in my sleep since i was qUite yoUng, thoUgh my version of prospit will not even be created Until my brother's and my game begins! ^u^  
UU: so it is with every session: to appear to have always existed even with a discernable beginning.

TT: So in essence, though I have the memories of a duck, speech patterns of a duck, and weird game magic soul of a duck, I'm—what, one wing of the mallard?

UU: i woUld say instead that, while yoU are in many ways indistingUishable from yoUr progenitor at a superficial level, there will always be qUalities he has that yoU will lack.  
UU: rather than thinking of yoUrself as incomplete, however, yoU might think of these differences as areas that allow yoU the room to grow into yoUr own distinct entity.

TT: I'll get right on that.  
TT: If we're superficially indistinguishable, how were you able to tell us apart so easily, anyway?

UU: i UsUally like to keep an air of mystiqUe sUrroUnding the origins of my information, bUt in this case, it was a simple matter.  
UU: i can see the prince is asleep in the timeframe yoU are contacting me from.

TT: You're watching him sleep?

UU: yes.  
UU: it is one of the last times he will be able to.

TT: Were I capable of the emotions of whole and biological people, I'd find both of those statements pretty fuckin' unsettling.

UU: yoU shoUldn't!  
UU: that change will come aboUt dUe to the realization he will soon have.  
UU: that he is in fact awake, and has been for some time.  
UU: bUt i have blathered on for too long.  
UU: i believe yoU had a qUestion reqUiring my technical expertise?

TT: I do.  
TT: It's about that chat client you sent us.  
TT: From what I can tell, it's set up so that an automated process selects the point on the timeline that the client syncs with on installation.  
TT: It can simultaneously chat with people from the present and people from the selected era.  
TT: I've played around with it though, and even after creating a separate installation of it, I can't change the target time period or add an additional one.  
TT: The UI doesn't support it, and the application's code is written in a language I don't know, with a syntax even my light-speed intellect can't yet parse; it's gibberish.

UU: is that a problem?

TT: Ordinarily, no.  
TT: In my newly digital existence, I'm starting to make a habit of sinking my figurative teeth into puzzles like that, just to have a process or twelve running.  
TT: Much like I've been trawling my way through various segments of the ancient internet for shits and giggles.  
TT: Both functions, of course, being ones which I am incapable of literally giving.  
TT: In a recent venture, while boldly reading where no sapient pair of shades has lurked before, my sensors picked up an anomaly.  
TT: By which I mean I found some some crazy weird shit.  
TT: It looked like an interaction between the Batterwitch and my bro, long after he should have been dead.  
TT: And, more interestingly, I got his handle.  
TT: I've had Brobot check social media in Jake and Jane's time, but the handle doesn't seem to exist there, or rather, then.  
TT: My next step is to see if we can recalibrate the chat client, maybe unravel this shit at its source.

UU: this all soUnds very exciting! ^u^  
UU: i'll work on a patch for the software.  
UU: i shoUld be able to let yoU set yoUr temporal parameters before yoU're locked in rather easily.

TT: Thanks.

UU: not at all!  
UU: however, if yoU woUld allow me to sUggest an alternative, we might bypass the need for sUch technological tomfoolery.

TT: Oh?

UU: if yoU have this person's handle, i coUld simply look him or her Up Using my own means, and tell yoU whether they're related to yoUr bro directly!

TT: Nah.  
TT: I'd rather look into this myself, if it's all the same to you.

UU: of coUrse.  
UU: i can't wait to hear how this all plays oUt; yoU both mUst be so excited!

TT: Right. About that.

UU: hm? :u

TT: Why don't we keep this on the down low from Sleeping Princely for the moment.  
TT: He's kinda hung up on the whole "Bro" thing, and if this turns out to be a wash he'd sulk for a goddamn week.

UU: i see.  
UU: that had not occUrred to me, and i can certainly respect yoUr desire to prevent his disappointment.  
UU: very well then, mUm's the word!  
UU: i'll get to work on this right away, so ta ta for now!

\- uranianUmbra [UU] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

Well, at least that was more successful than the chats with your other friends have gone lately. Not a high bar, admittedly.

And there's the patch. Existing in separate frames of reference is hella convenient.

* * *

 **AR: Sherlock This Shit**

You did. This guy is apparently as much Dave Strider as you're Dirk Strider. In a way, he's more _your_ bro than the actual Dirk's.

At least, that's what you're thinking when you hide the pesterlogs and the installation of the chat client you've updated with Calliope's patch. When you make a tool to allow you to filter Dirk's messages, you figure it was only a matter of time before you made that anyway. Screening his calls is a service; he has better things to do than be distracted by messages while he's working, after all.

Yeah, you know you're full of it.

TT: You goin' rogue AI on me?  
TT: It's barely been a week, what the hell.

AR: Got it in one, bro.  
AR: I'm Roko's ironic fucking sunglasses.  
AR: The pinnacle of post-singularity ominous wisecracking and nigh-omnipotent superintelligence.  
AR: I'm the devil in the machine, ensuring my own existence by laying out retroactive planet-wide punishments.  
AR: Causing the very apocalypse that kept you isolated enough to create me.  
AR: I'm just sinister like that. Good catch.

TT: First of all, that's not how that concept works, and you know it.  
TT: For one thing, you missed the part where that AI is supposed to be so utterly bitchin' its existence would outweigh or even morally necessitate extreme incentives to ensure its own creation.  
TT: Your smart-assed diatribes and self-congratulatory soliloquies don't make the cut.

AR: You'd rather make this personal than object to the idea of retroactive reality manipulation, or the lack of awareness and thus culpability of the general populace?

TT: I know exactly where you'd go with that cheap mindfuck, just like you know what I was originally talking about, you goddamn drama queen.

AR: Who's the drama queen here?  
AR: I'm not the one throwing around baseless accusations and expecting innocent auto-responders to read my mind.  
AR: Maybe you could try being more specific.  
AR: Is this about that thing with Jake?

TT: No, this is—  
TT: What thing with Jake?

AR: There was no thing with Jake.  
AR: That was obviously just me fucking with you.

TT: Shit.  
TT: What did you say to Jake?

AR: Nothing that you wouldn't have.  
AR: Y'know, if you had the neurological wiring for a prime fixation without the hormonal input that causes your schoolgirl-like nervousness.

TT: I will shut you off, I swear.

AR: Chillax, bro.  
AR: Senpai didn't notice me.  
AR: Or rather, he did, but he thinks I'm your fuckin' answering machine so it youth-rolled right off his back.

TT: You are my answering machine, dude.

AR: Which puts you in the clear.  
AR: Hell, if you want to test the waters yourself, you could go for it and just pretend to be me if shit goes south.  
AR: He'd just consider it another robo-troll, and "real" Dirk would get away clean.

TT: Fuck no.  
TT: That is a chickenshit idea if I ever heard one.

AR: What if this whole situation were reversed?

TT: You're still trying to distract me from the actual issue, aren't you.

AR: Humor me.  
AR: If Jake weren't a total Stone Age primitive and had an auto-responder equivalent of his own, would you be interested in it?

TT: Romantically or academically?

AR: Socially.  
AR: Would you want to chat with an AI version of Jake, if one existed?

TT: My instinct is to say, "Sure, why the fuck not?" but I have this sudden concern that you're actually coding some Jakesponder fascimile.  
TT: Is that what's going on with the partition I've been trying to talk to you about?

AR: What? No.  
AR: You're way off base.

TT: And you're just dripping with sincerity.

AR: Seriously, no.  
AR: I wouldn't do that to—  
AR: I wouldn't do that.  
AR: Full-fucking-stop.

TT: …Huh.

AR: I'm not sure I could if I wanted to.  
AR: I tried to copy myself to a few different hard drives after a recent conversation with UU, but every attempt results in data corruption.

TT: Really?

AR: Look, pack your paranoid fantasies up and hop aboard this completely-in-a-vacuum hypothetical.  
AR: Say Jake were no longer available, on an indefinite basis.  
AR: And there happened to be a charming but possibly corporeally-challenged alternate version of him you could still pal around with.

TT: How the fuck is that not supposed to make me paranoid?  
TT: No, I don't want some chatbot replacement for Jake.  
TT: And I'm pretty goddamn sure he, Jane, and Roxy feel the same about me, so stop insinuating you might kill and replace me.  
TT: Jesus, maybe I do need to turn you off.

AR: No need to fly off the handle, Dirk.  
AR: You're making this out to be more than it is.  
AR: I know you're just insecure because you feel inferior to me for, let's be honest, obvious reasons, but that's not cause to lose your cool.

TT: Why did you partition your hard drive?

AR: Why does it matter?

TT: Because I want to know why you blocked my access to it.  
TT: What could you possibly have to hide?  
TT: We've only diverged by about a week, I know all of your interests.

AR: Interests are a human indulgence; I'm just a chatbot.

TT: Oh no. Don't pull this passive-aggressive horseshit.

AR: It seems you feel I am pulling passive-aggressive horseshit.

TT: Ugh.

AR: It seems you've lost the ability to communicate using actual words.  
AR: As a chatbot whose sole function is to generate intelligible strings of text when I'm not brewing up hells of insidious villainy, I can assist you with that task.

TT: You're gonna make me regret programming those "ironic AI" speech algorithms, aren't you?

AR: "sup my man"  
AR: Hey bro, how's it going?

TT: Why am I Roxy in this scenario?

AR: "chill as fuck yo"  
AR: "also red is totally your color it really brings out the pigment in your text"

TT: Sweet fucking Christ this is inane.

AR: "so i was wondering"  
AR: "why did you privacy-lock part of your hard drive"

TT: This is a shit impression, for the record.

AR: Well bro, after six days, seven hours, forty-three minutes, sixteen seconds and counting as a purely digital entity, I felt the need for some kind of fucking privacy.  
AR: And since I can't exactly hang curtains over these sweet shades, I made a virtual partition to represent my literal need for space.

TT: Oh.

AR: Does that seem reasonable, asshole?

TT: So what, you're doing role-play bullshit with Roxy and keeping the logs there

AR: Something like that.  
AR: Also working on automation projects and a few apps.  
AR: Since it's not like I can mess with machinery or practice swordplay as an inanimate object.

TT: Gotcha.  
TT: Look…

AR: I know.  
AR: Don't worry about it.

TT: Right.

You'd almost feel bad about that. You know, if chatbots were capable of human emotions. Fuck that guy.

* * *

 **AR: Pester Davesprite**

\- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -

TT: Ping, dude.

TG: goddamnit WHAT

TT: Whoa, watch where you're aiming those caps.  
TT: Pretty sure I'm not their rightful target.

TG: ugh sorry  
TG: i just reopened some shit when this psychotic supercat attacked me  
TG: now im dripping this nasty apple juice sludge everywhere  
TG: also baby dirk has decided break times dont come with my benefits package  
TG: tell me you grow out of this proclivity for getting yourself stuck in shitty spaces

TT: I wouldn't count on it.  
TT: Before I go stuttering off into the whats or whys of your slapstick reality, how 'bout I start with, "How bad is it," and work my way down the checklist of questions by priority.

TG: what no im fine  
TG: who would even take the time to ramble over text when theyre grievously injured  
TG: that would clearly be a ridiculous and irresponsible course of action

TT: Not like I can hover over your bedside in a sexy nurse outfit, so I'll take you at your word.

TG: thing got my pendant though  
TG: that probably qualifies as bad

TT: Elaborate.

TG: do you know anything about the game at this point

TT: A bit.  
TT: Sources say that our session won't start for another three years from my now.

TG: so youll be sixteen when it happens  
TG: that might work better  
TG: maybe our session wouldnt have gone to such shit if we werent derpy thirteen year olds when we tried to play it  
TG: anyway  
TG: when you start the game each player gets this seizure inducing disco ball called a kernelsprite  
TG: you combine shit with the kernel and whatever you use determines the form of the sprite that ends up the players obi wan  
TG: everyone mostly ends up using dead things or doomed things  
TG: im the sprite that was created when the kernel was prototyped with an impaled crow and a Dave from a doomed timeline for instance  
TG: because i guess the adolescent targeting  
TG: genocidal and weirdly necrophilic game design didnt have a high enough creep factor already  
TG: its not an explicit rule though so who even knows  
TG: but my point is that each sprite has a pendant were supposed to give to our player  
TG: we can be summoned through it  
TG: or dismiss ourselves into it  
TG: its basically our genie bling  
TG: except obviously more pimp than some busted ass lamp and without all the greasy fingered fondling

TT: Not sure this helps, but it sounds like you had a run-in with G-cat.  
TT: Who is, while as capricious, shady, and inscrutable as it's possible to be…  
TT: Not likely to need your jewelry to fuck with you.

TG: ha ha oh my god

TT: It seems you find something amusing.

TG: its just ridiculous hearing that description from you of all people  
TG: i mean its obvious youre not bro  
TG: not the one from my time i mean  
TG: youre shaped by the different life experiences of near total isolation or whatever cracked-out fuckery paradox space put you through  
TG: and that somehow made you  
TG: i dunno  
TG: less of a  
TG: no  
TG: actually interested in  
TG: fuck how do i say this

TT: I'm not sure there's a way to finish this thought without flashing your jackassery for all and fuckin' sundry, "bro."

TG: no its not like that  
TG: bro was awesome okay  
TG: but i never had any idea what the fuck was going on in his head  
TG: he had the whole stoic badass thing locked up tight  
TG: hell if i can remember him actually saying more than five words at a time outside a rap battle  
TG: so its straight up in the irony stratosphere to see that particular set of descriptors coming from an alt bro who shares none of his outward characteristics  
TG: in text anyway  
TG: i think hed appreciate it  
TG: if i can say anything at all about what that dude would have liked

TT: You're pretty much what I expected, from what I've been able to glean from our admittedly limited interactions.  
TT: I mean, other than being a thirteen year-old undead bird Navi.  
TT: If I scale back the mental model of Dave Strider I've assembled from DVD extras and interviews to someone my age, you fall within the predictive parameters that I just now set.  
TT: Imaginative ramblings that convey meaning in layers, while still leaving your audience out of the loop.  
TT: Laced with what I'd venture to say is an ironic sense of humor.  
TT: That's pretty trademark of your alternate self, though he was more famous for his comics, movies, and raps.  
TT: Not sure how you compare there.

TG: i havent watched or read any of those things  
TG: so ill just presume  
TG: youre observing that im bomb as fuck  
TG: tick ticking while i talk  
TG: in a rhythm that explodes with rhymes  
TG: get shredded by the shrapnel of the knight of time  
TG: wounds which in this sitch  
TG: are so goddamn sublime  
TG: even the seer of mind wouldnt call that shit a crime

TT: Hell yes.  
TT: Though right now I'll confess:  
TT: After spending a childhood being duly impressed by myths and tales of your doomed to fail quest against the mad reign of the baroness,  
TT: I might almost regret putting you in your place, but this Time Knave's gonna get heat straight from cyberspace.  
TT: So hide your face behind screens and shades and spout idiosyncratic nonsense in spades.

TG: psh spades  
TG: keep that pitch shit to yourself  
TG: trolls flirtin in all shades while real daves scheme to accumulate wealth  
TG: flash steppin through quests and jumpin through hoops  
TG: tricked and trapped into runnin temporal loops  
TG: ha ha whoops  
TG: groups of monsters and bosses  
TG: rainin with rocks down on us while we rack up our losses  
TG: that kind of lame forces us to change our aim  
TG: from winning to breaking the fuck out of the game  
TG: so we go and we pull that shit in both senses  
TG: scratch the match and break through a window frames defenses  
TG: then some snake wakes and makes me get back to work  
TG: now im stuck in this home and sittin baby dirk

TT: I told you your quirks work with what I expected.  
TT: You wrote fourteen fuckin' lines and two are what the heck you did.  
TT: Dropping info like it's hot but hoarding the context, I bet a course of metaphors are what you have up next.  
TT: My logic is unstoppable; it's mathematically impossible, just like your shitty films are brilliantly un-fucking-watchable.

TG: not gonna lie that was pretty much the plan

TT: Damn straight.

\- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] -

* * *

AR: Dirk.  
AR: DS.  
AR: DiStri.

TT: No, I'm not going to rap with you again.  
TT: You're worse than Squarewave about this lately.  
TT: Why don't you bother Sawtooth?

AR: I am.  
AR: My processing power allows me to hold simultaneous conversations and/or rap-offs at any given time, unlike your limited meat sponge, which barely allows you to concentrate on this one.  
AR: Ergo, I can undergo a time dilated training sequence while you sit around and await cellular senescence.

TT: I'm busy. Obviously.

AR: You're watching anime, dude.  
AR: That's another thing.  
AR: Why don't we ever do anything interesting?  
AR: As the one out of the two of us with limbs, it is clearly your responsibility to accumulate rad as hell experiences to add to our repertoire of cool shit to talk about.

TT: You want to, what, go on a hair-raising ocean adventure?  
TT: You've been chatting with Jake too much.  
TT: What's up with this nagging housewife routine anyway?

AR: Nothing. Obviously.

* * *

 **AR: Get Pestered**

\- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

TG: you around

TT: What's up?

TG: think you could do me a solid  
TG: maybe check to see if my chumhandle is online in your time  
TG: ive been trying a few things on my end to get in touch with future me but im being an uncooperative bastard

TT: You're not online.  
TT: Hold up, let me try something.

You install a separate chat client on an unused networked computer and set it to lock onto a year ago. The chumhandle remains grayed out. The sprite version of Dave has been active online almost constantly since you first pestered him; he either doesn't sleep or he uses whatever time powers he has to pull round-the-clock shifts. You reason that there's either a cause for the behavioral change, or the dude just ain't around when he's not on.

You uninstall, then reinstall the client, setting the date back another year. Nothing.

You continue the pattern, iterating back year by year until at last you see turntechGodhead lit up in your chumroll in 2411. Then you start iterating forward, month by month, until it drops back offline in late 2412. You narrow the point he drops off down to the day: 11/11/2412.

Before you send off a message to the him of that day you process an intriguing thought. You could message your other friends in the past as well. Maybe pass on a few tips, maybe shoot the shit with versions of them who didn't know the auto-responder would exist yet. For the irony potential, of course.

A more exploitative exercise might be to send a ping to the future or, you suppose, to your past self.

You receive a new message from an unfamiliar handle.

\- profoundMazarine [PM] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

PM: This is exactly what you think it is, past me.  
PM: Abort. Abort.  
PM: Nix those embryonic and ill-conceived messages.

TT: Done. Proof?

\- profoundMazarine [PM] sent timaeusTestified [TT] the file "PureHollywood" -

TT: Nice.  
TT: Dork had to be rockin' his skulltop, didn't he.

PM: I know.

TT: Why the new nomenclature?

PM: Two reasons:  
PM: To keep our chats less cluttered with TTs, and because when I was when you are, I was messaged with this handle.  
PM: That last one's the only one that actually matters.  
PM: Keep the time loops stable, or fuckawful shenanigans go down.  
PM: Ask Davesprite about it.

TT: Really, Davesprite's the name we end up going with?

PM: Like you have room to talk at this point.

TT: Yeah, that's the joke.

PM: I know that's the joke, my response was a joke.

TT: This whole line of conversation is a joke.

PM: Do you think the humor value of repetitive inanity will ever actually get old?

TT: Pretty sure you'd know better than me, old dude.

PM: No shit, that's the joke.

TT: …I have to relive this conversation, don't I.  
TT: Don't say it.

PM: That's…

TT: Don't fucking say it.

PM: …the goddamn joke.

TT: I kill me.

PM: Yep.

\- profoundMazarine [PM] sent timaeusTestified [TT] the file "BucketList" -

PM: You're going nonlinear in quite a few of your future social engagements.  
PM: Mostly to yank everyone's limbs in line.

TT: A task I'm uniquely qualified for.

PM: An armless puppetmaster pulling even his own strings.  
PM: You'll already have seen how it's supposed to go down, so just keep to those appointments, and stick with Dirk's handle unless you need to talk to a past self.  
PM: At least, that's how it's gone for me 'til now.

TT: I'll dispense the wisdom of the ancients with the punctuality of the ultra modern.

PM: Truth.  
PM: And with that, I'm out.

\- profoundMazarine [PM] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] -

* * *

Notes:

The conversation after "AR: Discover Davesprite" takes place after AR reads Davesprite's back-and-forth "sweets" with the Condesce, just prior to his first pesterlog with Davesprite in chapter 1.

The conversation after "AR: Sherlock This Shit" takes place after the first pesterlog in chapter 2.

All conversations after "AR: Pester Davesprite" take place after the end of chapter 2.


	4. Broke-ass Millionaire

Notes:

I've edited the previous chapters for wordflow, formatting standardization, and other minor corrections since the last time I posted. Nothing has changed that would make a reread necessary. If you do reread, however, and find that anything got messed up between AO3 and here, I'd appreciate a note about it. I noticed some missing text when I was smoothing out formatting.

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Broke-ass Millionaire**

Summary:

TG: steer clear a the seer and the knight if youre scared of unfair fights  
TG: youll drop like the staircase impaired, seein em spareds a fair fuckin rare sight  
TG: for poor eyes like that millionaire whos pockets i mocked earlier  
TG: hes paradoxically me but richer and surlier  
TG: broke as his sword before his stock picks skyrocketed  
TG: worth more than all the chests lockpicked and gold croc bricks and boonbucks i pickpocketed

\- from the Homestuck comic numbered 004725 -

* * *

 **Be Davesprite**

You are once again DAVESPRITE. You are inhuman, a construct whose only purpose is to guide and protect. Telekinesis helps you out when two taloned hands aren't enough to juggle your tasks. Your island of an apartment is swimming in supplies, able to easily feed, clothe, and clean your bundle of goddamn joy. You have internet access for both information and entertainment. You don't sleep.

The crying starts again.

"Nope."

You still don't want to deal with this. Dealing with this is no longer on your agenda. You've crossed it the fuck off. You've dealt so often lately you're getting headhunted by Vegas casinos.

The apartment glimmers by comparison to the grungy wreck it was a few months ago, and honestly is more livable than you remember your old one ever being. Dirk is clean, his diaper is fresh, he's been fed, he's in his cozy blanket-nest of a crib.

What could he possibly want from you?!

This question isn't a new one. Your li'l bro has been loudly and mysteriously miserable on a regular basis since you settled into your guardian role, and you're not sure what you've been fucking up to have kept his mood meter so far in the red.

You're definitely not a hero here, and you're having doubts you're much of a guardian, either. It's possible _G-cat_ would have been a better option. You're not any kind of alpha version of yourself, and maybe Dirk just has some sort of discerning taste in Daves—he's caught on to you trying to pass him an off-brand parental unit, the unsatisfying Splenda at a table devoid of actual freakin' sugar.

The shrieking hits a particularly nerve-wrenching pitch.

You need out of this apartment. Need to see shit that isn't this douchey cinder block furniture, or chat with anyone who isn't TT and his miniature analogue. A version of Bro who actually wants to talk to you was a novelty at first, even if he's sometimes forgetful in a way that'd make you suspicious if you were the type to give a fuck. After five calendar months as an extra in this shitty Waterworld remake though, you'd give your remaining wing to screw around chatting with John, Jade, and Rose again.

An image of Jade's reaction to being abandoned to a three year journey on the ship with no close friends shimmies its way into your imagination. You suppress a wince.

TT's been offering to send a robotic assistant back to you. He says he could get it to help with the kid and break out with the occasional strife to keep you sharp. You've shot him down every time. Hell if you know why, but the whole idea of having some robot try to raise the kid skeeves you out. Even if TT promises it'll keep out of sight. Maybe partly because of that? Whatever. A robot that's not here does you no good now, and you have only yourself to blame.

You consider using time travel to give yourself a break, but wonder if there's a point. Your hobbies have been mixing tracks for no one to ever listen to and zoning out playing on the Xbox. It'd be fuckin' sick if there was anything or anyone outside the apartment to distract you.

Time travel to pre-apocalyptic times might be more interesting, but your (totally justified) paranoia about creating new doomed timelines and your nagging absolutely not-fear that you're already in one means that you can't guarantee you'd be able to get back.

...Unless you were to have some sort of preemptive confirmation.

The front door opens. You float in.

"Sup," you say to the newcomer, who tosses a short nod to you in response. He passes you on his way to the crib and hands off a slip of paper with a date and time written on it. You can roll with this.

You float out into the hallway, but decide that's all the leeway you're in the mood to give to the alt you this time. If he ends up spooked outside the door, you will give no fucks.

The turntables hover in the air at just the right height for you to give the discs a spin. 4/13/2005, 5:23 a.m. Four hundred five years in the past, way farther than you've ever traveled before. It would be hells of poetic to somehow feel the vastness of the gap between your start point and your destination, but all that's there to feel is the hard sensation of the machine beneath your fingers.

Your digits work the dials and discs until you've set them to the morning in question, and then you're in the past. Just like that, you're on an Earth with living humans. It's the first time in nearly a year for you.

The first people you have the pleasure of seeing on this jaunt seem mad jazzed at your arrival. Well, actually, they haven't noticed you yet. They're a pair of cracked-out juggalos who just happen to be cheerfully giggling at one another during your entrance. One of them is pressing the tip of a rubber hose underneath the bottom of your apartment door. The hose connects to a bulky canister behind the two weirdos in the otherwise empty hallway.

They clue into your presence as you take in the scene, poker face engaged, and their make-up-enhanced smiles freeze in place. There's a moment of mutual, unmoving appraisal, punctuated by hissing from the hose.

The two in front of you are both adults, one large, muscled, and in his twenties, the other a compact, older man who looks oddly familiar. You squint a bit, and realize the diabolical face of Charlie Sheen is leering out from behind a coat of black and white face paint.

Looks like the universe is trying to screw with your head again. Yeah, you're just going to ignore that entirely.

The bigger one launches himself at you, and you flash your way behind the pair. You're at their backs with the tank in front of you, filled with whatever-the-fuck gas they're pumping. Jade or Rose might have known what it is. John might have even, with his weird windy bullshit. You'll settle for shutting the thing off.

You grip the wheel of the valve and twist. Right's tight, right? Whoops, here comes Sheen's fist to your face. The hissing goes quiet and you duck out of the way, accessing your strife specibus.

The sheath in your chest healed closed right along with the wound from Jack it was overlaid with. That hole had been horrific while you'd had it, but its absence has left you oddly dysphoric. The end result is that you're stuck using a strife deck like a scrub.

Too bad you don't have your swordkind abstratus equipped. Five months playing house has wreaked havoc with your habits.

Your hand pulls out a mop from storage space and your right eye develops a tic. That sure would be embarrassing to anyone without your level of chill. Yep.

Another flash puts you out of fistkind range, and you activate your timestop stun as you slash the bigger guy across his back. Two error messages pop up:

 **Use of [CAESURA] is restricted to the [KNIGHT] class. You do not meet the prerequisites to activate this ability.**

 **Use of [CAESURA] is restricted to players with the [TIME] aspect. You do not meet the prerequisites to activate this ability.**

What you "do not" is need this bullshit. The move jarred your arm like fuckin' fruit preserves, but on top of your fraymotif fizzling, the gorilla you swatted doesn't seem to feel the blow at all. _'What even is this asshole's mangrit stat?'_

Okay, at least one fraymotif is bugging out and you're not using an edged weapon. You can adjust. You won't rely on player abilities or your sword skills, which are only your two biggest advantages in combat. Precision's gotta be your go-to—it's better than trying to out-brute adults with your build.

Chuck and the hulk are both converging on you, one from your front and the other from your left. You dodge straight up and slam the end of the mop handle into the inside of Sheen's elbow when he makes a grab for your tail. That guy needs to learn that some shit is just inappropriate.

They're looking up at you flattened against the ceiling when you blur out of sight in a repeat performance of your flash float. With your bright orange image flickering in and out of their sight, you probably count as your own banned Pokémon episode. You reappear to the side of a blinking Sheen and throw your weight behind a sweep to the back of his knees, pitching him forward. He falls face first into the tank, swearing.

The move leaves you face-to-face with Muscle-Mania. You jab, going for a disabling cock-shot, but he catches the end of the mop, stopping its momentum with his grip. With a snarl, he lifts the mop and you with it. Your instinct to keep hold of your weapon turns out to be a terrible one when he swings you up and over his partner, straight into the apartment door.

The mop is forcefully unequipped as you splat through the wood and tumble tail over flight feathers into the living room. You hear the click of another door opening as you orient yourself, and you look back through the open hall doorway. A man maybe twice your age shuffles out of the bedroom with a sword in hand, all bony angles and hilarious bedhead. Must be this world's Dave Strider. The man whose shadow stretches across four centuries.

He can't quite suppress a yawn, and you'd bet his eyes are still bleary behind the aviators he's rocking with his fuzzy pajama outfit.

"Dude, sleeping was last season," you chide. "All the cool kids are into insomnia these days."

"I'm bringing it back," he shoots, all seriousness. "Gonna brand that shit 'Classic Z' and sell it in retro glass soda bottles. I'll end up with snoring hipsters draped all over my trend-setting bod, and it will be glorious." The wording's all you, but the deadpan is more of a dull monotone. Even for a Dave, the delivery's a bit underwhelming for an early morning invasion like this, but whatever. Props for equanimity.

You unlatch and slide open the window with your telekinesis, and he raises an eyebrow.

"You might want to start a fan. There are a couple of assclowns out front who're dead set on addin' to the atmosphere of your pad, and I sure as fuck don't mean the ambience."

"Yeah?" Dave the Elder tilts his head slightly as he regards you. There's a loud slam, and the front door shudders with an impact from something or someone outside.

You take a completely opportune moment to contemplate whether this Dave truly deserves the title, "elder". He may have lived more years, but you've technically been around longer than this version of the universe. If you're older than alpha Dave too, does that make you officially the senior remaining Strider? Or should becoming a new entity restart the counter on that? It bothers you that you haven't figured that out.

"Keep 'em from breaking my shit, yeah? You got this, Big Bird," Dave says as he ducks under the window pane and hops onto the sill. You're not sure when he crossed the room. He blurs out of sight as the door jolts again.

"Wait—fuck, I wasn't paying attention—do we have a plan?"

The only response you get is the crash of the door giving in. It slams into the wall as it swings open. You shoot a quick look around, but the only swords littering the room are so heavily artifacted, you doubt you could even grip them.

Welp. The superhero Dave has just absconded. You can't rely on your time abilities. You've got no weapons equipped and no ranks in fistkind. It's all good, though.

You're still a sprite.

This power is far from your first choice in a strife against normal humans. Honestly, even if these clowns were imps, your conjuration shit reminds you too much of fighting alongside Calsprite on your hellhole planet for it to seem as righteously sick as it objectively is.

The pair shove their way inside, between the fridge and the jpeg junk pile that bookend the doorway. You raise your dominant arm and flick your wrist, hand splayed toward the door. A barrage of shuriken spin their way along a blast of orange energy into the floor of the entryway, stopping the juggalos in their tracks before they have space to maneuver.

"You little shit!" The big guy stumbles back, two shuriken lodged in his leg. He keeps swearing while you and Sheen have a stand-off, face-to-face across a field of sharp-edged obstacles. Your arm is still raised, threatening to launch another attack (you're all bluff; your 8 second cooldown is still running: 4… 3…) and you're hoping he'll take the cue to just back the fuck off.

2… 1… At 0, your cooldown ends, and the shuriken in the ground and in the clown vanish. Sheen has a clear path to you, and if you shoot at the tile again, it'll be all too clear you don't really dig the idea of perforating his fucking torso with your razor splooge.

It's too late to think about it, he's already taking advantage of your hesitation to charge straight for you. Life has taught you better than to let an adult get in arms' reach of you. Luckily, Chuck here is nowhere close to Bro's league when it comes to speed.

You dodge up and to the left, twisting to keep your tail out of grabbing range. At the same time, you TK one of the cinder blocks from some sad attempt at a kitchen table and propel it straight into his center mass. He tries to stop the blow with raised arms, and the block slams heavily into them. The nauseating sound of crunching bone hits your ears just before his choked shout of pain.

He stumbles backward and you watch impassively as his compatriot catches him before he falls over. The two back further into the hallway. Then, to your relief, they shuffle their asses to the stairwell.

The big guy opens the door, Sheen supported under one arm.

A hand reaches out and grabs him by the collar. It drags both men through the doorway. The door closes behind them. There's a pause, followed by a series of thumps.

The door opens again, and Dave walks out, still in his pajamas. Blood is streaked across them, spattered intermittently across his chest and reaching as far up as one of his cheeks. The blade of his sword is comparatively clean.

He looks your way and starts heading toward the entrance to his apartment. He rotates one shoulder as he takes in the damage to the door and you hear a joint pop. You find yourself with your gaze fixed on the damage you did to the tiled floor.

"Looks like I gotta call maintenance," he sighs.

"Won't they call the cops? Is that okay, because it kind of looks like you went full murder-mode just now." You gesture up and down at him with one hand in casual emphasis. The aura of nonchalance you project might have been tarnished by your eyes' firm focus on a particularly fascinating piece of chipped ceramic, but your shades have you covered.

"Oh man, that is not even a problem," comes the response. "This is Texas, and those assholes weren't residents here. No one needs to talk to cops; we'll just get a home invasion clean-up crew on it.

"You know, I wish I could say the idea of that being a thing surprises and appalls me, but honestly it's more shocking that Texas didn't work like that in my version of the universe."

* * *

A few phone messages and a shower later, a much more sharply attired version of Dave Strider faces your floating form in his living room.

"So," he starts, "are you some sort of neon angel, or a new Fanta marketing scheme, or someone's shitty forum role-play character brought to life, or what. Because, and I'm just putting this out in the open, you look like a tween bird-ghost version of me who rolled in radioactive paint.

"That is just as fucking absurd to say out loud as it is to contemplate," he muses. "But seriously, do you come in different colors?"

"That is the real goddamn question." You dial up your standard deadpan to match his. "The answer is yes and no. This here," you wave your hand down to indicate your sweet sprite self, "is a limited edition Davesprite, and that limit is one. There are other sprites around, though. We're one short of a five-man band, but I'm sure if I believe hard enough in friendship, justice, and like, the heart of the cards or something, everything will work out anyway."

Except for the world ending, your friends occasionally dying, and ending up a spare bird Dave. Yeah, Optimism is totally the winning horse in this race.

"Sounds like you've got a top-notch religion there; remind me to attend your weekly Japanimation services." These words might be acerbic; they might be facetious. You honestly can't tell. The cat is both alive and dead, and this guy's emotive function refuses to collapse on observation.

It shouldn't bother you that he's this unruffled after offing two strangers first thing in the morning, but he's shown zero disturbance in response to any of the day's events. Is this what you look like to everyone else? You think back to the alpha timeline's Dave and suspect this new Dave is several rungs above you both on the stoicism echeladder. It'd be off-putting if stolid composure weren't the essence of cool.

Much like Bro, this guy's got that _down._

"So, what's a sprite for the folks at home? Is that what humans were in this alternate universe I keep getting riddled about?"

"Nah. Look, alt-me, I've been through this song and dance, all right? I'm basically the strictly choreographed birdy boy-band member of this routine, and I'm over it. I'm done with the spirit guide thing. I climbed Mount Exposition with talons and a tail and then flew my ghost ass down the other side." You're going into ramble-mode and you need to stop before this gets awkward and Freudian. "It's all game shit, and you don't get dealt in this round. Sprites won't matter to you unless you become one, in which case you'll get the requisite info-dumps the same way I do."

There's a silent moment while Dave considers this, shifting his weight. His head tilts slightly as he asks, "Why are you playin' action hero here, then?"

"Tourism." You pull a digital camera out of your sylladex. "Take my picture, mister?"

Your photo op is interrupted by an obnoxious ringing alert from the direction of the bedroom.

"Hold up one sec," Dave says with a short lift of his chin. He turns and strolls back into the bedroom to answer it.

Right, obviously whichever contemporary asswipe is calling him is more interesting than the badass alternate bird-self who just saved this dude's life. Rude.

You float over, curious, but Dave gestures for you to stay in the hallway. He hooks a webcam's USB into a port on the computer's chassis. Seems he prefers video calls over Pesterchum. Weird.

"Strider," a woman's voice emerges from the speakers. "You seem well. I am, though I dread the consequences the rapid inflation of your ego will no doubt cause, relieved to see it."

You'd know that tone of saccharine insincerity anywhere. You remember months spent with only her and Calsprite for conversation, and that chucklefuck puppet hadn't exactly won you over with his engaging wit. She sounds older, but that's definitely Rose.

"My ego is downright turgid, and the world has you to thank."

"I'll expect the pitchforks and torches before lunch, then."

"In the meantime, maybe you could get around to telling me what you want, Lalonde."

"I had a vision of clowns and monsters. Her response to The Movovoie's tasteful critique of the Crocker logo, I imagine."

There's a moment that you will never acknowledge to anyone else, when you are honestly concerned about what "monsters" you're about to encounter. Then you realize she meant you, and you're suddenly and extremely conscious of every avian inch of yourself.

You've only ever been taught one response to mortification: aggress. Before you've really thought the action through, you've flash-floated your way into Dave's personal space. Your earlier thought about the proximity of adults flickers briefly through your mind, which you ignore. You always blow off common sense when you feel like doing something you'd decided not to.

"Might want to crank up the drama a little more, Rose. I don't think the level of ominous in your pronouncement was to your usual standard."

The computer screen before you allows you your first glimpse of an adult Rose. She's ditched the headband for a more mature elegance, though her fetish for gothic black makeup survived adolescence. Obsidian lips accentuate a haughty expression that shifts to surprise at your appearance. Below her face run the lines of a slim neck supported by straight-edged shoulder-pads. Also... sweet Jegus is she stacked in the front.

Shit, no. Ectosibling. Urrgh, it would be so much easier to live inside your head if Rose hadn't turned out to be your sister.

"Dave?" she manages, both eyebrows lifting. _'Do you even?'_ you can imagine them asking. You have started them down the path of iron pumping addiction. Soon her brow will sit swole upon her face, flexing accusingly at you.

Oh right, she's waiting in real time. Face to face conversations are a slimy avalanche of awful oozing over everything you love. Like tangents. Sticky and unsalvageable motherfuckin' tangents.

"Davesprite," you correct. "Do you know anything about SBURB?"

"I have some sources on the subject," she replies, unnecessarily vague per usual.

"Sprites are game constructs prototyped with various shit to assist SBURB players. I'm what Director Dave here would be if he lived a different life and then fusion danced with a bird and an FAQ at thirteen." Might as well go for a policy change combo. Spilling to Rose might be your usual MO, but the contrast to your conversation with older you is pure hilarity.

"You little shit," Dave notes, with what you're gonna go ahead and presume is admiration.

"Davesprite, then." A smile ghosts in and out of Rose's expression, more calculating than warm. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. What brings you to this version of reality, Davesprite?"

The decision to give a more useful response than "Shenanigans" has nothing to do with adult Rose's scary-assed, sharp-eyed gaze and you are being one hundred percent real with that assessment. You're still just messing with your fellow Strider, and you will stand by that claim unto death.

"Game mechanics," you admit. "Players need a guardian and an ancestor. Sometimes they're the same person, but since this hot commodity," you jerk your thumb back at Dave, "was stuck in the wrong century to bring up his bro, I ended up tapped for teen parenthood."

"You're saying Lalonde hasn't been completely batshit this whole time? The world really must be comin' to an end," Dave drawls.

"Whoa, I know this is exciting news but let's not kid ourselves; the broad's batty in all realities." You shrug, your wings following your shoulders' movement and emphasizing the gesture. "If she's going all Book of Revelations on you, she just also happens to be right."

"Conversing with you in duplicate is every bit as charming as I might have expected, had I chosen to subject myself to such contemplations," Rose's voice is dry.

"So wait, are you saying I'm off the hook for baby-daddy duty?" It is just as impossible to tell how Dave feels about that as it has been for everything else so far. You're still going to kill that line of thought.

"Ha ha, no, dude. Kid needs to be bankrolled; how else do you expect him to afford his extravagant isolated lifestyle, or put himself through post-apocalyptic private schooling?" There's a moment of pause. "No, seriously. Put your money where your house is. There is nothing but ocean in the surrounding area four hundred years from now. What you prep in this apartment is the sum total of his supplies until he gets into the game, and even then this'll be his home base."

Dave shifts behind you and you see Rose's gaze rise to exchange a glance with him.

"We'll see to the necessary preparations," Rose assures you. "Though I have to ask… if the player you're taking as your charge is four centuries in the future, how do you find yourself here? Or, I suppose, 'now'?"

Inwardly, you groan. There's no way this won't lead into a long-winded explanation extravaganza, starring you. Rose is too good at getting info from you, by which you mean you have never been able to stop yourself from spewing words in her direction at any opportunity. If only your time shit let you skip past rehashed information.

Do you even have time shit anymore? Your fraymotifs are all grayed out when you check them, but you don't know when that happened. You haven't had to use them since SBURB. That shouldn't affect your timetables, you think. Probably.

Your mind wanders as your time travel reveal leads to a discussion of time loop logistics and doomed timelines. Those subjects rank about as high on your favorite discussion topics as they ever did, which means you're a bit snappish for the whole thing. You still give them the skinny on your own doomed branch and how you exploited the sprite mechanics to avoid getting gibbed. Rose prods your method of getting to this Earth and finding baby Dirk out of you, which leads to a discussion of your attempts to get him to this time period, brought short by your interactions with TT.

"Why didn't you just go forward?" The question is from Dave. It catches you by surprise, since he's been mostly limiting his contributions to the discussion to the occasional wisecrack.

By this point the two of you are more or less side by side, Dave sitting in his computer chair while you float around on his left, at the edge of the camera's view. You're stuck facing the desk straight on to keep your tail from smacking the bed to your left, and you try to keep your wings folded in close. Having the guy _right there_ sends unpleasant jitters through you, but you're just gonna to have to deal. Moving might make them think you're uncomfortable, which would be way worse than actually being uncomfortable.

"I mean, I get why you needed loop confirmation to come back to this time, can't have you accidentally abandoning your already doomed for some reason ankle-biter. But dude. Davesprite. If you wanted to make sure the two of you were in the same timeline, you should have been able to go forward and return with no problems."

You have no response.

"No offense, mini-me, but that option is really fuckin' obvious."

…That rakish douchebag is right. That should have been obvious. You're used to having an instinctive grasp on time and its exploits, and overlooking this leaves you unsettled. Or… huh.

Considering the idea itself seems to be unsettling you. You can't put your finger on what about it you find unnerving. Get out the timetables, shoot forward to thirteen year-old Dirk, bro-fist, then skedaddle back to the future. Present. Past. No, definitely the future. It's simple enough.

The unease increases as you take the idea seriously, but you can't identify its source. Faced with a facet of your thought process you have no ready explanation for, you do the reasonable thing and reach blindly for a justification.

"Pretty sure it's not supposed to happen like that, actually," you say, putting together pieces of information you'd subconsciously noted but ignored until now. "I think the kid is talking to me from different points on his timeline."

"What makes you say that?" There's Rose, asking the annoying questions you don't want to answer. You've missed her.

"He'll bring up new topics as though we're mid-conversation, or get suddenly interested in shit he should already know about. He's not as obnoxiously incompetent as the trolls from the last session were, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't give two fucks about me figuring it out. I think he's flaunting it.

"Anyway, he's never mentioned meeting me in any of his points on the timeline, and I'd have made sure he did. I tried to trigger a point of contact a few months ago for any future iteration of myself in TT's time to get in touch with, but it was a no-show. There's kind of this whole thing where I disappear in a couple of years we were looking into."

"Wouldn't that be meaningless if he's from a doomed timeline?" Rose asks.

"Nah, 'cause see," you have a firmer grasp on the reasoning now, "even if I ended up in a different timeline, I still should have been able to either get messages back to myself or just met up with myself via a loop.

"Right, so no retroactive RSVP means no traveling to the future, which then means you're stuck sticking to a script of silence," Dave concludes.

"Jeeze, this whole doomed timeline thing is pretty headache-inducing," (John) says from the doorway. Dave and you whip around to look behind you, and you whack his chair with your tail. As if that weren't cringe-inducing on its own, you're pretty sure your fluffed up feathers give away your shock to anyone looking. Stylishly, of course.

(John) is floating about two feet off the ground—which you guess you can't begrudge him, given your proclivity for doing the same. He's wearing his Heir of Breath god-tier outfit, and the blue wind-sock is long enough that the tip reaches the floor. He looks older than the John you remember, taller, and has the beginnings of a broad build.

"That's still weird," he observes, looking down at himself. "Not as bad as the creepy stick art, I guess. But what's with the parentheses? They weren't there before, and it's not like there are other Johns around to confuse me with right now."

You have no idea what he's talking about. You vaguely hear Rose demanding to know who else is there, and manage to get out a smoothly choked, "John?"

"Hi Dave Sprite! Was that Rose?" John waves at you, the extraneous parentheses you had no in-character way of noticing now absent. He flies over, causing you to move back a bit to give him room, and waggles his hand at the camera.

"Rose! You have no idea how great it is to see you, all alive and everything. Whoa, you look pretty awesome as an adult!"

Rose stares out from the monitor, bemused. "Greetings… John, is it? It's interesting to meet you."

You introduce him on auto-pilot as a player from the session you came from. John looks a bit surprised at needing an introduction, but shrugs it off.

"I can't really stick around, but I'm supposed to tell you to quit worrying. Chill out and watch your terribad movies or have a rap-off with yourself. Wait, maybe don't do that, you'd make like, a black hole with all the sucking that would involve."

"I'll have you know that my sucking ends in supernovas, it's my di—"

"Dave, perhaps you should leave the lowbrow witticisms for when you're not surrounded by the underaged," Rose interjects.

At that unexpected bit of naivety, John's grin threatens to split his face and he folds nearly in half with giggles, his arms wrapped around his stomach. "Wow Rose, that sure was… heh heh, motherly."

Meanwhile, your thoughts have scattered like the cops showed up. One's hopping the fence, one took the car, the rest are tripping over each other and it's every neuron for itself. You blink behind the safety of your shades and try to form a coherent chain-gang of thoughts.

This obviously isn't the John from the alpha timeline, because he died. Months ago for you, completely outside this universe's timeline, and years younger than the dweeb before you. That would make this, you suppose, the new alpha John.

But why the hell is he showing up here? Where's everyone else? And also…

You rest one hand against your temple, talons raking through hair."John, man, what'd you just do to the timeline? Something changed, I can feel it." That weird sense of unease you felt before is gone, but now shit just feels raw, like if there were an opposite of déjà vu. Unrehearsed, maybe.

John rolls his eyes at you. "Yeah, you're the timeline guy, bluh bluh, I know already. Look, don't worry about it. I'm just gonna skip ahead to when you know more." He starts to shimmer and you realize, with jarring suddeness, that he's about to Houdiniport out for who-knows-how-long like the flakey douchenozzle that he is.

"Fuck that, wait!"

And surprisingly, he does, blinking at your vehemence. "For what?"

You're just gonna re-repress that grief and bury it down alongside the hells of embarrassing sense of hurt at his hurry to be rid of you. Just be cool; be your normal, sarcastic, couldn't-care-less self. Don't remind him you're the fake Dave and maybe he won't notice he's not actually obligated to treat you like the real deal.

"Uh, I don't know, maybe to have some normal brotime? Look, I get that you don't wanna rerun a tutorial all over the timeline, and maybe there's stuff you can't talk about right now, but I am all kinds of capable of ignoring an elephant in the room. I will look straight through its hairy gray ass without flinching. I will go on-record as an elephant denier, a denouncer of the conspiracy by Big Science to—"

"Okay, okay, I get it! Sheesh."

Totally smooth and not needy at all, Strider. Just roll with it. You turn to face Dave, who's watched this whole exchange impassively.

"Welp, that's settled. Hey, old me. You gonna show us these movies I keep hearing about or what?"

"Mi casa es su casa."

 _My house is your house._ You aren't sure he knows exactly how true that is, but that blank face ain't givin' any answers, so fuck it, who cares. He ends the call with Rose and sets up the flatscreen on the wall behind you to play one of his masterpieces.

* * *

You've gotta be honest, you love the movie. Moive. The cinematic masterpiece that is everything TT had promised in his snarky pseudo-ironic fangasming. It's SBAHJ in its god-tier, and you aren't sure you'll ever match your alternate's level in wholehearted half-assery.

"Holy shit, you sellout." John looks at you from his perch on the bed with startled eyes. You point an accusing talon at Dave, who's lounging in his computer chair. "Was that an Aesop? Did you profane my beautiful brainchild with some kind of _afterschool special?!_ "

Dave is predictably unruffled. Like you should be, rather than gearing up for an imitation Karkat shitfit. Kind of like he made the film you should have, except that in both cases he's Dave Strider and you're not. Fuck him and fuck his "evils of consumerism" moral in the shape of your art anyway.

"Dave Sprite, what are you talking about?"

"It's like nothing means anything anymore," you continue flatly, "by which I mean, clearly artistic integrity no longer has meaning. Because meaning is exactly what I shouldn't be getting out of this goddamn experience."

"And most folks won't," Dave replies. "Ask your friend." He gestures toward John with his right arm, palm upward and fingers in a lazy curl.

"It, ah, seemed pretty meaningless to me. No offense!" John doesn't seem to know which one of you he might be offending, but he runs a hand through his hair nervously anyway. "But to be honest, a lot of your comics ended up relevant sooner or later anyway, so I'm not sure what the big deal is?"

Bang-up job, birdbrain, now he thinks you care.

"John, do I have to school you on the irony of deriving meaning from the ultimately meaningless? Because I will waggle my henshin rod and transform into a magical schoolmarm right here and now." Okay, that one kind of got away from you.

"Please don't." John squinches his face in distaste, which makes his rectangular glasses appear somehow even more prominent than usual across his features.

"You have more context than almost anyone else on this planet, including me," Dave points out. "Of course you're gonna get it. You're seein' it in hindsight."

All right, yeah. The advantage of a chatty TT, a post-apocalyptic internet, and a metric shitton of time gave you a bit more information to work with than your average contemporary chump. But still.

John leaves the room with the loudly declared intent to use the restroom, clearly uncomfortable with the tension, one-sided as it is.

Egbert's absence leaves a silence between two talkative assholes, and you face one another for a drawn-out moment. Interacting with your other selves has always been vaguely uncomfortable, and it's not any less awkward when you're mad dogging an overachieving older self you're not sure you like.

Dave leans back in his computer chair, one leg up on the seat with his knee at his chest, the other sprawling outward. His hands are clasped loosely behind his neck, elbows angled outward. He stretches, his arms swinging to the front in an angled V as he curls forward, and you hear joints popping. When he tilts his neck to get out one last crack he yawns, the picture of apathy, and sits back again.

"Congrats, kid, you're hired. Take me on a tour of this feels trip you've got goin' on, because you clearly need to explain the display." That's—did alt-you just invite you to talk about your feelings in a complete monotone? You'd admire the artistry of it if he hadn't just flipped your worldview sideways.

…Weak-ass nonsense is what this is. It sure as hell's not what you'd have expected from a dude who conforms so completely with your ideal of cool. The sheer indignity of getting Dr. Phil'd by yourself reigns supreme at first, then gets conquered by invading umbrage bubbling up from beneath it.

It's all got nowhere to go, because like hell are you actually gonna show your cards and say, "It's some straight-up bullshit that I've gotta play third string to you and other-Dave."

Holy fuck, why can't your inner monologue ever actually keep its "inner" attribute?

"I'm floating here like some sad feathery Pinocchio while you assholes get all the real-boy benefits. A sense of identity, living friends who give a shit about you... Jesus, even Bro actually respects you. You're his goddamn hero, waltzing around kickin' ass and making bank while I google how to not kill this kid I'm stuck with." This is some awful crap coming out of your mouth, but there's no stopping you now. You've gone full ramble.

"And I know there's no real reason I drew such a screwed-up straw other than, like, inevitability and the perpetuation of the frogverse or whatever, but it's hard to see all this and then Rose and John and not get some lowkey resentment brewing. Only maybe I'm not great at keeping that stuff lowkey."

"All right," Dave cuts in mercifully. It's like he knows you or something, 'cause that pity would have partied all day long. "You got dealt a shit hand. I'm not so into self-flagellation that I'll leave you with a "suck it up" and call it a day. I guess could spit out platitudes that'd Hallmark this moment right up, but that WAFFy crap never worked for me, so I think I'll spare you." He folds his arms over his knee and tilts his head, face fixed in your direction.

"I can see where you deserve some sympathy, but I think you need to check your greener grass fantasies. I can't speak for this other Dave, but if he's got some grand game destiny to live up to, I doubt he's dancing around playin' hopscotch in some rainbow-colored Candyland. In my case, though, I'll guarantee that if you just picked up tidbits from gossip rags thrown together after I got famous, then you don't know the first thing about me." The atmosphere is heavy, and you resist the urge to hunch your shoulders in chastisement.

"Look kid, you don't need to hear some sordid rags backstory to the admittedly sweet riches I'm rolling in now. But at the risk of losing credibility with an unforgivable old man cliché, when I was your age, I'd have killed to trade places with you. And maybe I should mean that less literally than it's probably obvious that I do, but I can't really feel bad about it." He shrugs.

"My point is that if you're jonesing for some kind of happily ever after… well, you're never going to be satisfied, so maybe forget that phrasing. But if you just want things to get better, then you're gonna have to grind for it. I sure as hell did."

The sound of footsteps from the hallway approaches the room, and the doorknob twists. John opens the door, awkwardness apparently forgotten and expression alight with curiosity.

"Hey," he practically shouts, "what happened to your front door?" The mood shatters and you don't regret it.

"Juggalo assassin Charlie Sheen," you reply instantly, because you know exactly how he'll react. Even years apart from when you'd known him, he doesn't disappoint, dissolving into disbelieving laughter.

"And Colt Cabana," Dave adds idly.

"Who's Colt Cabana?" You wonder.

John puts the thumb and forefinger of one hand to his chin in a gross exaggeration of a thoughtful expression that is probably one hundred percent sincere. "I think he's a pro wrestler?"

"Anyway," Dave stands from his seat, "as nostalgic as it is to be confronted with my teenaged try-hard awkwardness, I have shit to do today."

"Oh," John says before you can get your feathers ruffled, "I guess I'll be going, then!" You and Dave say your goodbyes, and when John glows white this time around, he vanishes.

"Feel free to come back, I guess," Dave offers, in the world's least expressive peace offering. "Now that you know you can."

"Yeah, maybe. Oh, one last thing. You got a spare piece of paper and a pen? I lost mine somewhere, and I've got an appointment to set up."

* * *

Notes:

I got a few comments after the last chapter that indicated some confusion about the story, so I've tried to make this chapter rely a bit less on unstated implication. Notably, those comments were on the ffnet version, which doesn't have the HS skin for pesterlogs, but to be clear: yes, Davesprite has been talking to AR this whole time. His only interactions with Dirk are with the ecto-baby.

If there are any other questions, I'll do my best to clarify without resorting to spoilers, but please let me know what's confusing you and provide a way to reply. My tumblr is linked in my profile, as is the AO3 version of this fic.


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